We've also been commanded to drop everything we're doing and go tesify on these matters _in person_, thousands of miles away from us, by the stated deadline :|
So it's not just a matter of writing "we don't know". They have to produce a lot of material and then travel 1000's of miles to show up in the court in person.
And complaining about how the subpoena's asking for tons of documents. Again, every subpoena does this; you have to negotiate with the attorneys on the other side to figure out what they actually want. If SimulaVR was suing Meta, then yeah, Meta will play hardball. But they're a third-party here - chances are, attorneys for Meta are looking for very specific things (namely, economics to support Meta's arguments about the VR market) and SimulaVR will be able to negotiate a way to provide that info without turning their company inside and out.
And if you are asking WHY SimulaVR should be required to provide ANY info at all... well, that's the American legal system. Courts and parties have broad power to obtain evidence from third parties.
Basically, SimulaVR needs to grow up and hire lawyers to handle this.
It wasn't SimulaVR who responded to you, so why respond by insulting SimulaVR for the comment of someone else? They've already got legal counsel:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33111249
All SimulaVR did in their blog post is state the facts. They haven't refuted the point you said, and may be already looking into that.
Why is this so hard to grasp. This subpoena is to get certain market information. SimulaVR can negotiate with Meta to provide the information in a way that's not super burdensome for them. I did this all the time when I was a lawyer.
SimulaVR is a FRIENDLY WITNESS for Meta, since they can presumably provide evidence that Meta operates in a competitive VR market. This means Meta's lawyers will be very accommodating to get the info they need.
And yeah guess what, you need to hire lawyers from time to time when you run a business. Just like you need to hire accountants. It sucks but that's how things are.
Ignore the tone of these things. Legal is commanded to write in this manner.
They received a letter that looks important and official to them, and looks to them like something they have to comply with.
Are you giving legal advice to ignore letters from lawyers?
The only advice I saw them give was to hire lawyers to help them deal with it.
It’s not just the few hours they’ll be testifying, or giving deposition. A reasonable corporate representative is going to need to do quite a bit of prep work and review of relevant materials. So, that’s both a legal cost, and a productivity cost for whoever is collecting those documents and briefing the corporate representative.
“Just some hired legal representatives” hides quite a bit of cost.
