- I got sued.
(dramatic music)
I, David Crosby was sued.
(beeping)
This face right here was plastered all over a lawsuit
filed in the state of Delaware.
And this wasn't just like a slip and fall case.
This was a lawsuit for millions and millions of dollars.
Needless to say, the last few weeks
and months have been a little scary.
I forgot my mask, every single time.
To understand the story, you really have to go back
a couple of years ago, when our first video
started going viral.
(singing)
I was working at Amazon and totally unprepared.
I had somewhere around 12 vacation days saved up.
After the whirlwind that followed
those first couple of videos
with Little Big Shots, a movie, Ellen,
as much as I loved what I did,
it was clear that if we were gonna
continue making videos, I was gonna have to quit my job.
As fun as that sounds, there was a problem.
My business partners were really young.
What if they didn't wanna be on YouTube?
Would Claire feel pressure to sing
or take the fun out of it?
These are answers I just didn't have.
And it's not something I wanted to risk.
I wanted YouTube and Facebook
and content creation to be a hobby.
So it would always be fun.
I was agonizing over what to do.
Full-time YouTube, keep my job at Amazon
or something totally different.
That's when I got an email.
I Got an invitation to be on The Voice.
- I do want you to go but I don't want you to go.
- Think anyone's gonna much a button for me?
- I hope, yeah.
- [Man] If they don't push a button,
are you still gonna love me?
- Yeah.
- So when you're on The Voice,
you're actually stuck in a hotel room pretty much all day,
and you have a lot of downtime.
Sometimes the contestants would all play baseball together
or something, but most of the time,
I just stayed in my hotel room and worked on my next idea.
And as soon as my time on the voice ended,
I was ready to officially launch that idea into the world.
This is day one, this is day one of our business,
a business that does not have a name.
And I won't spend too much time on this,
but basically I had some friends
that also worked at Amazon and together,
we were pretty sure we could make a smart home camera,
way cheaper than anyone else on the market.
Like, way cheaper, it was totally random.
I've never really been much of a tech guy.
I've definitely been more of a guy that's into music
and media, but this opportunity just seemed too perfect.
And starting a company meant I could work my own hours.
I wouldn't need to worry about vacation days.
I could go to LA or Orlando whenever I wanted to.
So we started a company, we called it Wyze.
We made a smart home camera and sold it for $20.
This is the camera in June's room.
This is Ashley, 25 weeks pregnant,
sleeping with June in her crib,
in the middle of the night
when June was crying, she's a good mom.
But that's the kinda thing you can do with this camera.
You can watch stuff.
Watch your kids, your dogs, fish, all sorts of crazy stuff.
And it worked, the business kind of just blew up.
And then we got sued.
A company called (beep) sued us for millions
and millions of dollars.
Why, they said we copied their idea
or in legal terms, we infringed on their patents.
Now I've never heard of this company,
never heard of this patent.
When I looked at the suit, it looked just totally bogus.
How could they claim that they had a patent
on a smart home camera?
So we said, we'll see you in court.
(beeping)
So over the last year, we have spent over a million dollars
in legal fees, a million dollars in legal fees,
just absolutely crazy.
So we had to find some new investors.
We need money for this and for some other stuff.
And there was one person we knew could really help us out.
(upbeat music)
Shawn Carter, Jay Z.
Okay, so Jay Z was not the only person we could think of,
but Jay Z did invest in our company,
enough to keep this battle going,
for four more months, until today.
What's up, man?
You still working in here, check this guy out.
Wow, this is Ashley's sister's husband.
He has been working like a week straight
replacing all of our floors.
Ashley actually took the kids
and she went over her mom's house in Spokane.
And they've been hanging out there for the week,
while Nate's been getting the floors done.
- Hello?
- [Man] Hi.
- Oh hi.
- Do you wanna see the floors, check it out.
- Oh my gosh, I love it so much, that looks amazing.
- Hey, are you free for a second?
- [Woman] I'm scrambling myself eggs.
- I need you to get like sparkling cider
or some something out of the fridge and join me on zoom.
you call me back, I'll get set up.
(banging)
- Hello.
- Today, it's all over.
- [Woman] Not showing off your bartending skills very well.
- We need like a legit bottle opener.
- We do have a bottle opener upstairs.
- [Man] Where is it?
- [Woman] In the utensils drawer.
Did you find it, that's it.
- Oh man.
- Oh my gosh, did that go on the carpet?
- Went everywhere.
- Dave, is this call to announce to me
that you're gonna buy me a new carpet.
I'll drink to that, new carpet.
Gonna take a lot more than paper towels babe.
I'm already drinking my toast.
- Don't drink it yet, we're just gonna
dye the carpet red then.
- Oh, is it the cranberry kind?
- [Man] Yeah.
- Yeah dude, big time.
- Looks pretty terrible.
- Your window blinds are missing a couple teeth,
did June get to that?
- Think June pulled them down, yeah.
- Looking classy back there.
- Everything's sticky, all right, wonderful.
- I miss you.
- The lighting makes you what kind of naked,
with that shirt color on your skin.
- I'm so sticky, I'm covered in this, too bad.
All right, today Ash, the lawsuit is over.
We won, we won the lawsuit.
The judge invalidated all patents.
We won on all counts and he just ripped them a good one.
I want to read you some of my favorite lines.
I got this line, I can't see
because glasses are covered in sparkling cider.
Their patents basically said you can't
have a surveillance system because they did it first.
The judge wrote, monitoring activity for security
or control purposes, is a longstanding
and fundamental human activity.
The general concept of keeping watch
over property is timeless.
As early as 31 BC for example,
the Romans monitored and secured their empire
through numerous watchtowers,
which could communicate through a signaling system.
Basically saying a security cam system
has existed since 31 BC, and you're saying
that you invented this first, that's ridiculous.
- I like that.
- It's over, we won.
- Super grateful for that, that was a long standing stress.
- That's it.
- Thanks for the drink and the good news.
- Is parked inside our district,
off my glasses, into my mouth, that was kinda good.
- Maybe you should patent on something like that.
Look how big my belly looks with this sweatshirt on,
I look like the Michelin man right now.
(laughing)
- It's adorable.
(singing)
Right, well, I love ya.
- Love you, bye.
- Well, that is it from us this week.
We'll see you guys on the next adventure.
(scrubbing)
(upbeat music)