Facebook appeals ruling that it stole tech. So, Italian judge issues new judgment: Pay 10 times the original fine An Italian judge has not only upheld a decision that Facebook stole a partner’s technology but issued a new fine of ten times the original amount. The Milan appeals court decided for Italian company Business Competence, whose Faround app used data from users’ Facebook profiles to build an interactive map that showed them shops …
Take the European Commission route and make the fines a percentage of worldwide turnover. 5% of Facebook's worldwide turnover would be eye-watering even for Facebook, possibly in the $4Bn range and would need to be reported as a loss on the published accounts. It would have been cheaper for Facebook to give the small software company an offer it couldn't refuse.
If this is the kind of app Facebook needs to copy I think they have bigger problems than any judgments, adding discount codes to the nearby businesses is at best a minor iteration on what map apps already do. With Facebooks size it's not like they need to be first to market, just adding as feature to their existing app would probably kill it.
It is much worse, it is money, driven by greed and a corporate culture that is built on what's yours is mine and what's mine is mine.
They simply have no concept of privacy, morals, decency right and wrong. It is a cultural thing that is starts at the very top. I am sure at the bottom of the heap there are a few decent people who are working there because they need a job and cannot be all self-righteous about who their employer is but they will be few and far between.
One can hope that over the next few years the unregulated (mostly US based) companies that are operating like do come unstuck as the like of the EU & China take them to task, Of course it is all far too late as much of the damage has already been done and it is difficult to reverse it but at least there may be a possibility these buggers can start to be regulated and being held responsible for what they do or facilitate.
Well, can we all just agree that the entire system is pretty well screwed up?
Once a company gets to a given size, make the directors responsible not just financially, but criminally as well. Let's talk jail time for blatant abuses, instead of providing them bills that they'll pay with other people's money?
While we're wishing, how about providing the lawyers a stake in it as well? Frivolous lawsuits would drop dramatically if the lawyer was also personally responsible.
Then let's have real fun, and treat a government in the same fashion, and actually hold elected officals to the same set of standards for corruption. Let's see their financials exposed so we can see just how big the payouts (alt: bribes, alt: contributions--depending on your views, but I know what words I'd use....)
Won't happen. Lawyers become politicians to protect lawyers.
When offered the software to check before incorporating it into facebook, any honest company would have said that's a great idea and accepted it. Then if their users liked it a lot, the honest and correct action would have been to buy it outright.
To copy it in just two months and change the name is just so immoral! They would never have accepted the smaller company's software for an appraisal if they were already developing their own product!!! These super-rich companies rely on no small company having the resources to fight them in court, especially when they appeal and it requires a second set of lawyer fees. I wouldn't be surprised if facebook appealed again. A sensible court would say no to a second appeal, you lost twice, so pay up. And I suspect any payment would take ages to come through and would be in stage payments.
If a small developer comes up with a good idea they all face a problem if it has to be accepted and built into a global company's systems in that they all risk this sort of problem and the legal fees required to get justice. It has happened many times in the past, and will, unfortunately, will continue for many years.
The judge had the right idea, however, saying the previous compensation was ridiculously low and slapping a times ten payment on them instead. Great for the small guys, peanuts for the global giants. But it will still happen again. That level of compensation will not worry them at all.
There are companies that work the interface between small business application and the large multinational software company. So you and your app are kept at arms length from the big company. The interface company undertakes to ensure that even if big company changes they will maintain the 'middleware' interface.
Been there when I was with a 5 person UK company and we touted our wares to a major US corporation way back in the 90's. We chased them for a decision as to whether they wanted the software for 3 months (as my boss, the owner, wanted to sell the company) before they eventually said that our solution was basically crap. 6 months after that they announced, to great fanfare, a very poor imitation of what we had offered.
Our company engaged a very expensive (is there any other kind?) lawyer who specialised in such things. He paraphrased the 19 pages of legalise returned by the US corp. as "we will tie you up in court until you go bankrupt if you do as much as send a reply acknowledging receipt of this letter!"
Nothing has changed in 30 years then!
Anon because the US corp is still a big player in control systems and I do have to buy and use their equipment and the software (which is still behind the curve that we demonstrated, although it has now attached AI and Big Data labels to some of the components, but the functionality has not changed!)
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