I would guess that from his perspective (which may not be what the court decides is the right perspective, of course) he might be thinking something like, "hey, we started this together, I had these 10 ideas, we parted ways because we have the wrong personalities to work together, now I see 8 of my 10 ideas in the finished product (even if it's out of, say, 100 total ideas or whatever) -- and I feel like you never actually compensated me for about a month of genius that I provided. By helping you start this thing it was secretly our baby all along, and I was okay with you doing whatever you pleased with it while it was a bunch of crazy ideas that hadn't proven their mettle; but now that they have, this is my last chance to speak up for my fair share."
Again, that's not necessarily the truth, but if you want to understand the psychology of how someone can claim this stuff and feel reasonable about it, that's how. We've very much only heard one side of this discussion and while Altman's side is very reasonable, it'd be interesting to see the other side.
We were involved in a fracas something like this, but on a smaller scale.
One of my key learnings was exactly this. Our lawyer (a magnificent guy who stewarded through the ugly process) said early on "you can bet that the other guy's lawyer is getting an entirely different story from what you've told me".
Much as we (especially techies) like to think of ourselves as binary,rational types, the fact is that two intelligent people can each hold conflicting, but sincerely held worldviews. Its very hard to get your head around this - the natural thing is to got full on fight instinct - he's a bastard, he's lying, he's out to screw me and my family, he'll say anything.
Add on top the fact that things often are gray - likely in this case there are two sides to the story, other guy probably has a rightful beef about this.
> the fact is that two intelligent people can each hold conflicting, but sincerely held worldviews.
THIS! A thousand times over. The mere fact that a generous settlement was turned down seems to indicate both sides sincerely believe they are in the right and not some "out of the woodworks charlatan as sama has us believe..."
Again, that's not necessarily the truth, but if you want to understand the psychology of how someone can claim this stuff and feel reasonable about it, that's how. We've very much only heard one side of this discussion and while Altman's side is very reasonable, it'd be interesting to see the other side.