On the stand, Zuckerberg also confirmed ZeniMax’s incredulous assertion that Facebook’s “plan was to begin legal diligence on Friday and sign the deal on Monday.” In a followup, Zuckerberg suggested that Oculus was a smaller company at the time and didn’t need as much time for due diligence as other large Facebook acquisitions, such as WhatsApp.
ZeniMax’s lawyers established that Zuckerberg was not aware of an earlier non-disclosure agreement outlining the collaboration between Carmack and Oculus founder Palmer Luckey until 2016, when he was told about it by lawyers involved in the case.
The prosecution presented other evidence to show how eager Facebook was to get in on VR through an Oculus acquisition. “I wanted to just give him all my money on the spot,” venture capitalist and Facebook board member Marc Andreessen reportedly said of John Carmack in introducing Zuckerberg to the idea of an Oculus purchase. After seeing Oculus’ technology in action, Zuckerberg wrote in an e-mail that the company was “miles ahead” of the competition.
ZeniMax also tried to make some legal hay of Facebook’s longstanding motto “move fast and break things,” suggesting that Facebook may have “broken” some things in quickly signing the Oculus deal. Zuckerberg joked that the motto has changed and that Facebook now tries to “move fast and build stable infrastructure” (a modification Facebook has publicized at least since 2014).
Aside from the questions about IP ownership, Zuckerberg also revealed in the trial that in addition to the $2 billion purchase price, Facebook had to spend an additional $700 million to retain key Oculus team members and another $300 million in deliverable milestone bonuses.
In a statement provided to the press, Oculus said, “We’re disappointed that another company is using wasteful litigation to attempt to take credit for technology that it did not have the vision, expertise, or patience to build.”