Interserve, Inc. et al v. Fusion Garage PTE. LTD

Filing 176

Declaration of Patrick C. Doolittle in Further Support of Memorandum in Opposition to Motion for Preliminary Injunction (Re-filed pursuant to order dated 9/10/2010) filed byFusion Garage PTE. LTD. (Attachments: # 1 Exhibit A, # 2 Exhibit B (with redactions), # 3 Exhibit C, # 4 Exhibit D)(Doolittle, Patrick) (Filed on 9/16/2010)

Interserve, Inc. et al v. Fusion Garage PTE. LTD

Doc. 176 Att. 2

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in particular Judge Seeborg, will be interested in seeing what's going on. MR. BRIDGES: appropriately.
MR. STERN: I hope you do. I hope you

And we will respond

do.
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MR. BRIDGES:

Now, are you doing this to

try to set up avoidance of making your witness available on Thursday? Is that what's going on?

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MR. STERN: that.

This has nothing to do with

I think we've sufficiently met and conferred The record reflects numerous attempts

about this.

to try to avoid -- the witness evading questions by providing long answers that are unresponsive to very specific yes or no questions. I think we've gone through this. BY MR. STERN: Q. Isn't it the case, Mr. Arrington, that

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you spoke with your colleagues about poaching Fusion Garage employees?
MR. BRIDGES: ambiguous. BY MR . STERN: Objection, vague and

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Q. A.

Do you understand the.question? Could you be more specific?
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Q.

No.

The question stands.

Dial you speak

with your colleagues at CrunchPad and TechCrunch about poaching Fusion Garage employees? And I'm using the word "poaching" in the way that it would have been used with you. MR. BRIDGES: Objection, vague and

ambiguous.
you may answer. THE WITNESS: 10 There were -- there was

one person on the team, ter. Cubrilovic, who made suggestions that we needed to move away from Fusion Garage, and he suggested some extremely inappropriate things.' By MR. STERN:

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Q. A. Q.

Did you ever send Mr. Cubri.lovic -Cubrilo"vic. -- Cubrilovic an email that rejected his

suggestions about poaching? A. Q. I don't know. Didn't you in fact tell Mr. Cubrilovic

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in response to his suggestion about poaching Fusion Garage employees, at a time that you contend there was a fiduciary or partnership relationship between the parties, that you want to discuss this option?

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A.

Can you show me what you're referring
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Matirw c:TiMVa+

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to? Q.
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No.

I'm asking you a question..

You can

tell me that you don't remember. It's entirely up to you. The question stands,

A. Q.
A.

I have no recollection of that. Didn't you in fact tell Mr. In fact, I was disappointed that he

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would even suggest that. I brought -- the next time Chandra was in our office, I brought both Nik and Chandra into our office -- those two clearly had an issue with each other -- and the three of us talked about this issue. .issues. And I was very specific about the

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I said, "You guys need to work together."

I was very open about this.
QIn fact, on August 17th, 2009, Mr. x

Cubrilovic suggested to you that you poach Fusion Garage employees , you asked to speak to him about the subject, and then on August 18th, a day later,

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he repeated his suggestion to you; isn't that right? A. Q. A. I need to see what you're referring to. I'm just asking you, do you recall it? Absolutely not.
MR. STERN : Next in Order.

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(Deposition Exhibit 9 marked for identification.) 263

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BY MR. STERN:

Q.

This is a document that was produced to

us by TechCrunch. It's an email that's been
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authored in part by you and by Mr. Cubrilovic.
MR. BRIDGES: Move to strike the

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characterization of the document.
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MR. STERN: BY MR. STERN:

well --

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Q.

Looking at the bottom of the page, the

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lower 40 percent of the front page, do you see where it says August 17th, 2009 at 9:02 a.m.? A. Q. Yes. "Nik Cubrilovic wrote." Do you see

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that?
A. Yes.

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Q.

Now, you see that he's writing that to

you; is that right? A. Q_ Yes. Okay. And in it, he says:

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"Have you spoken to Chandra in the past few days? Just want you to know what he does doesn't know so far."
Do you see that? Do you see what I'm

reading?
A. Yes.

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THE WITNESS:
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What I read in the press.

That's about it. BY MR. STERN;

Q.
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What do you read in the press?
They said they raised, I think, a $2 And then I think they said we have

A.

million round.

another big round coming. But, again, I don't know. That's about all I know about it.

Q.

Did you ever raise a $2 million round

for the acquisition of Fusion Garage? ..MR. BRIDGES:
ambiguous. THE WIT'NBSS; round that was offered. BY MR. STERN; We never closed on the

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Objection, vague and

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Q.
A.

Who offered the money?
In the term sheet it was First Round Ron Conway I think had signed

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Capital, SoftTech VC.

up, maybe not formally, and they were going to put together the rest of the round as needed.

Q. going to be? A. dollars, $2.
Q.

Do you remember what the total round was

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We were targeting a couple of million

But that round never closed; is that

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ambiguous.
EY MR. STERN:

Q.
A.

well, you mentioned TechBase. We have events we sell tickets to and

sell sponsorships to; we have an advertisingsupported. -- a number of advertising-supported websites; another website, CrunchBase, which is advertising and subscription supported. Q.
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Do you sell a web tablet? We do not. Right now are you'in the pxocess of

A. Q_

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developing a web tablet?
MR. BRIDGES : Objection, vague and

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ambiguous.
THE WITNESS: We continue to have hopes

of doing something in that regard and occasionally have discussions with people around opportunities. BY MR. STERN:

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Q.

When was the last time that you put

together a proposal to any company about developing a web tablet?
MR. BRIDGES: Objection, vague and

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ambiguous.
THE WITNESS: question, please? 351 Would you repeat the

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{

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Garage sells a JooJoo to somebody, does that sale take any money out of the pocket of_TechCrunch?
MR. BRIDGES: ambiguous, argumentative. BY MR.. STERN: Objection, vague and

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(Brief recess.)
THE VIDEOGRAPHER: record at 6:33 p.m. MR. BRIDGES: Sure. If the court We're back on the

reporter could ask the question again or reread the question, I would appreciate it.

(Record read.)
SIR. BRIDGES: I just want to stress that

we're designating the transcript as "Highly Confidential," but we'll sort the details out later, but this will be kept highly confidential.

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Q.

Well, you,swore to'Judge Seeborg or paragraph 36 of Exhibit 3:

Judge weir the following,

"Denial of the preliminary injunction would come at a heavy penalty to TechCrunch which has invested approximately $400,000 in this project." Now, when you got that number, did you
just ask Ms. Harde to give you a number? A, Q. A. Which paragraph? Last paragraph, 36. Yes.

Q.

So you have no idea of what that number

is made of; is that fair?
MR. BRIDGES : THE WITNESS: Objection, argumentative. You asked me not to 362

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the time that we had introduced the product to the public and it would be us being served with this theoretical patent infringement claim -- "us" being
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all of the founders in the company.
BY MR. STERN: Q. As of November of 2009, was Mr. Conway

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committed to providing capital into CrunchPad?

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A.

"Committed" is a word I'm not willing to

sign up to, but he seemed to remain interested until the end.
Q_ Capital. And the same question.'for First Round Had -First Round Capital given you an

unqualified commitment to put $100,000 into CrunchPad?

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A.
Q.

They had not.
Did SoftTech Ventures provide you an

unqualified commitment to put $100,000 into SoftTech Ventures (sic)?

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A.
Q.

They had not.
h As of November 2009, do you know of any a

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Singaporean investor who had committed to putting 1.2 million into CrunchPad?
If'

A.
Q.

No.
As of November of 2009 -- withdraw that.

When I say "as of," I mean any time up to November
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going to have a couple questions.
THE VIpEOGRAPHER: at 6:46 p.m. We are off the record

(Brief recess.)
THE VIDEOGRAPHER: record at 6:55 p.m. We're back on the

EXAMINATION BY MR. BRIDGES:
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Q.

Mr. Arrington, I'm going to ask you a

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few questions briefly.
Mr. Stern asked several questions about a communication from Mr. Cubrilovic to you that used the-word "poaching." A. Yes. Do you recall those questions?
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Q.

And he asked you a series of questions

on whether you responded to his comment by email, Do you recall those questions?
A. Yes.
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Q.

What communications, if any, did you

have with Mr: Cibrilovic about that comment other than by email?
A. I communicated with Nik at least once by

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telephone in Singapore when I was able to get ahold of him and consistently in person when he returned 373
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to California and expressed outrage that he had gone beyond the charter of the trip as I sent him out there to do, which was to help with the software, understand where we were with the software, and to assist the team.

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He had engaged in background checks. Clearly Chandra had complained directly about that. I responded to Chandra by email that that was not part of what Nik it was supposed to do; that the rest of what Nik was doing was inappropriate, completely inappropriate, and undermined our partnership. When Chandra came to our office, one of the first things I did was sat Chandra and Nik down
in person in my office together at the same time and asked what the heck had gone on, why there was so much friction between the two -- clearly there was ill will between the two of them -- and demanded that they clear it up then and there so that we could continue to work together productive. And. they agreed to do that.

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And I also told Nik both privately and in front of Chandra that if I was forced to choose, that I would choose Chandra, that Chandra was crucial to the project. And Nik's involvement, if
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it became impossible for Nik and Chandra to work together, it would be Chandra that was chosen. And

after that, from my perspective things had calmed down. Q. You were also asked whether TechCrunch

or CrunchPad had secured firm commitments -- T believe that was the phrase -- for financing or
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investment.
A.

Do you recall that line of questioning?
Yes.

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Q.

Sorry.

The question was whether you had

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received unqualified commitments regarding financing of CrunchPad or investments in CrunchPad.
Do you remember that questioning? A. QYes.

What obstacles were there, if any, to

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getting unqualified commitments to investing in CrunchPad?
A. It was difficult to perform -- for firms

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to perform background checks on Chandra. There were, some negative'things, random negative things about him out there in general. And being from Singapore instead of the U.S., it was difficult, and there were some issues around that. Chandra did not check out well.

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That being said, with our involvement, we
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And you know, as the product was delayed 2
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and, you know, it wasn't necessarily urgent for me on a day-to-day basis to get it done on a day-to-day basis. I mean , it was always sort of just around

the corner, but always very hard to nail him down on 6 just who we were talking about and just how much and what the relationships were between everyone.

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Q.

So it's your sworn testimony

I want

to make this clear, that it's your sworn testimony that prior to July of 2008 you had received no information regarding Apple developing some sort of web tablet; is that fair? MR. BRIDGES: Objection, vague and

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ambiguous.
THE WITNESS: BY MR, STERN: Yes.

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Prior to July of 2008, had you heard of

any other company that had developed or was
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developing a web tablet?
MR.. BRIDGES : Objection, vague and

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ambiguous.
THE WITNESS: product. market_
BY MR. STERN:

I get excited about the

There were a number of products on the

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Q. July 2008

That was a yes no question. Prior to

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