Slashdot Mirror
Zenimax Accuses John Carmack of Stealing VR Tech
John Carmack made waves last year when he left id Software, owned by Zenimax, to join Oculus VR in order to help create its virtual reality headset. Now Zenimax has sent documents to Oculus's legal department claiming Carmack "stole" technology from them when he left. They said, "The proprietary technology and know-how Mr. Carmack developed when he was a ZeniMax employee, and used by Oculus, are owned by ZeniMax. Well before the Facebook transaction was announced, Mr. Luckey acknowledged in writing ZeniMax's legal ownership of this intellectual property. It was further agreed that Mr. Luckey would not disclose this technology to third persons without approval." Carmack says, "No work I have ever done has been patented. Zenimax owns the code that I wrote, but they don't own VR." Oculus was also dismissive: "It's unfortunate, but when there's this type of transaction, people come out of the woodwork with ridiculous and absurd claims."
They've proved to be trolls before, so this doesn't surprise me in the least.
Ah, John, you make deals with the devil... are you then surprised when he comes calling for repayment? It's unfortunate that so many smaller, independent studios are absorbed by larger companies, who then proceed to strip-mine them of their IP and talent, leaving a dessicated corpse of a company in their wake to be discarded at their convenience.
I'm sure their partership with Facebook will be *completely* different.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Not sure they own his "know-how". If they patented something, show us the patents. Otherwise you really can't own the fact that the person who developed a technology know that technology.
The fact that they say that creeps me out a bit.
...insofar as their product is complete vaporware to date, Romero can clearly claim prior art (pretty much anything he's started where someone else wasnt clearly carrying him).
Just sayin'.
-Styopa
That's what people don't understand and the reason why patents suck. Ideas are NOT original. Implementations are.
That's why patents cover implementations, not ideas.
Implement any given patent in a different way so as not to hit the patent's claims, and you have a whole new (and probably separately patentable) thing.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Zenimax has always been a massive troll...
Not really. An actual software implementation would be source code, which is protected by copyright, not patent. A patent for software is often much more like "idea" than "implementation". See "slide to unlock", "bounce back when you reach the end of a list", or "rounded corner".
What we're dealing with here is a trade secret dispute. Zenimax alleges that Carmack was privy to inside knowledge of Zenimax's work on VR tech while he worked there, and now he's allegedly run off with that knowledge and given it to Oculus VR.
Think of it like the formula for Coca Cola - it's not patented, never has been, but it's protected by trade secrets law. If someone works for Coca Cola and discovers/absconds with the formula, and then sells it to, e.g., Pepsi, then that person violates trade secrets laws by doing so. But if Pepsi independently discovers or reverse engineers Coke to discover the formula on their own, without relying on Coca Cola's inside knowledge, then more power to them.
so Carmack made a deal with Zuckerberg to use his money to contend with Zenimax in the courtroom, because he couldn't do it alone.
I wonder if this is actually a challenge under Trade Secret law rather than patent law. Depending upon what John signed as a condition of his employment, he could be in some hot water.
In a lot of cases, the legal theory called inevitable disclosure gets tossed around. It's a way to make a non-disclosure agreement act like a non-compete agreement in jurisdictions that forbid the latter, by convincing a judge that an employee has an unacceptable risk of disclosing trade secrets that he brings with him.
Zenimax lost a fortune when it very foolishly bought iD. iD gave Zenimax exactly ONE game, the disastrous Rage that iD had sank tens of millions of dollars into prior to the sale.
The Rage engine was simply the worst generic engine ever developed- its single greatest failure is completely misunderstanding the work-flow of artists and others that produce the necessary assets for a game. With Rage, Carmack solved an interesting technical problem (that crudely became known as 'Megatexture') that no-one had ever requested be solved for modern game production.
After buying iD, Zenimax sank a new fortune into rapidly expanding the iD teams working on new games (what new games?). Rapidly, they discovered why iD had a reputation as the world's worst GAME designers. Carmack was discovered to be part of the problem, and the company was more than happy for him to "butt out" and go work with Oculus VR while still under his existing contract with Zenimax.
Today, Zenimax has two games about to be released using the Rage engine. Both look visually very primitive compared with other current AAA titles, but at least they should make some profit. HOWEVER, neither game is created by the iD teams in Zenimax.
Zenimax wants their money back. Normally, the world would respond "tough", but the whole Oculus VR/Facebook deal makes Zenimax thinks it may even turn a profit from its purchase of iD.
John Carmack was a 'free' man when Facebook finalised the deal to buy Oculus VR, but he most certainly was promoted by Oculus VR as being a key player in the team that created their success when Carmack was 'owned' by Zenimax. Today Oculus and Carmack will happily state they'll throw out ANY code potentially contaminated by Carmack's Zenimax contract- they had long depended on third-party code from other sources like Valve anyway.
So Zenimax relies on a factually true but nebulous position. And any court will ask why, if Zenimax cared about the assistance provided to Oculus by Carmack (which happened with Zenimax's explicit permission), they didn't reach an arrangement AT THE TIME with Carmack and Oculus. However, it seems that Oculus offered Zenimax some stock (long before the buy-out) which Zenimax couldn't be bothered to make a decision about.
The Law takes a dim view of companies that seek to manipulate a situation so they do the work first, and only THEN attempt to extort THEIR preferred reward. This kind of situation always smells like a well established con.
So Zenimax is going to have to prove some form of dishonesty of the part of Carmack and/or Oculus. But I bet that proves impossible. Neither Carmack nor Oculus had a history of anything but complete openness. Indeed, it was in Carmack's direct interest to be as open as possible, given how stupid Zenimax was in the first place allowing him to work with the Oculus people without a clear contract between Zenimaz and Oculus.
Most of us will expect Facebook to pay Zenimax something to go away, but Zenimax is a big company, and a 'little' pay-out is nothing to them. As I said at the top, Zenimax is actually looking to turn its financially disastrous purchase of iD into a significant profit . A quick Google suggests Zenimax paid north of 100 million dollars, but the income made subsequently from iD 'assets' wouldn't have even paid for the yearly running costs of their new purchase. So I guess Zenimax is looking for at least 100 mill from Facebook, and probably more like 150.
This is exactly the way "Force Feedback" products got thrown to the wolves. I hope it isn't a similar ending for VR headsets. This stuff has been tried for over a decade.
Let's hope this dies a quick death. Otherwise, are we all meant to wipe our brains after each job? How very marketable our skills will be then - each job locks out another area from our future prospects. Will these companies continue to compensate me for all the work I am deliberately not doing for their competitors?
Tough luck to this company that they let Facebook/Oculus steal the march. They should have launched their own VR system rather than letting Oculus get all the good press.
I love this! For once an argument for not patenting software tech. The claims of something stolen without evidence? That's probably actionable somehow.
What happens is that the companies, on their deathbeds, make bad financial decisions and get in bed with mafia financiers. They then assign patent rights to patent troll lawyers, who's entire living is made by these bullshit claims.
Good luck. Sounds like Zuckerberg has more money and better lawyers than you! Game, set, match.
Zenimax agreed with Carmack working with Oculus, while still under his original contract with Zenimax. Zenimax accepted that Carmack was coding for Oculus, and actually had a signed agreement with Oculus acknowledging that fact, and claiming ultimate ownership of that code.
Carmack and Oculus are more than happy to ensure that ZERO code owned by Zenimax goes into any future product- by all accounts the code was junk anyway, and every current significant promotion of Oculus Rift is done with other third party software, including code from Valve. Oculus Rift is literally STONE SOUP, which is why every informed person was amazed that the dummies at Facebook thought there was anything worth buying in the first place.
Zenimax chose NOT to have a payment contract with Oculus when they allowed Carmack to work there. This is 100% the fault of Zenimax. Now, after the fact, Zenimax wants to unilaterally set a payment figure, and base this figure NOT on the work Carmack did, but on the fact Facebook paid 2 billion to buy Oculus VR. This logic will crash and burn in court.
The real-deal is that Zenimax wants pay-back for their disastrous decision to buy iD in the first place. Zenimax is well over 100 million dollars down on that deal, and they'd like their money back "thank you very much". But everyone knew the hopeless state of iD before Zenimax wasted their money buying them. Carmack had ran the company into the ground, from a licensed engine perspective, with only one genuine OUTSIDE customer for the Doom 3 Engine, and no outside customers likely for the dreadful Rage engine. iD was desperate to sell, having sank their fortune into the horrible Rage game. Everyone knew iD couldn't design new games, and everyone knew that iD's main success, licensed game engines, was long dead as well. The only sane reason to buy iD was if Zenimax was convinced that it could exploit iD's IP, namely Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein- IP that even iD itself had failed to usefully exploit for years.
Every decision made by Zenimax after the purchase of iD got worse. They paid to buy the rights to 'Prey', the ONLY outside (non-iD financed) title that used the Doom 3 engine, and lost a small fortune there as well, when the Prey 2 project collapsed.
They're all still stupid things to patent.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
After 'burning' iD (Carmack lost interest in making AAA games engines that anyone wanted to license- he had ONE customer for the Doom 3 engine, and zero likely customers for the Rage engine), and failing with his 'space' projects, one would assumed he was done- finished. But, on Zenimax's dime, with Zenimax's total permission, he created a new opportunity for himself at the 'stone soup' joke of a VR company, Oculus VR, and bounced back to the top when Facebook wrote that cheque for 2 billion.
And there are dummies here so moronic, they accuse Carmack of having made some kind of mistake? It is just hilarious watching betas try to judge alphas.
At Oculus VR, Carmack can "fiddle" to his heart's content- all he really wants to do these days. And who can blame him. His 'glory' days are long behind him, as with so many people who are 'hotshots' in their youth. At some point, one might expect him to once again use a portion of his personal fortune to indulge in some engineering fantasy, but hopefully his space fiasco teaches him to choose something more modest this time.
The summary doesn't say, but "Mr. Luckey" is the FOUNDER of Oculus.
This is really stupid though, because I think Zenimax is saying that Carmack stole secret technology for Oculus that Oculus was already aware of, but agreed not to release. In order for this to get settled in the courts, the "secret" technology will no longer be secret. What a stupid move.
What if Zenimax isn't operating alone here; what if they have a silent partner, someone with an incentive to delay Occulus; say, for example, Sony...
John loads his BFG and aims it at Zenimax, it fires ... screaming, flames, squishing noises and body parts everywhere.
This has happened before...
http://scholar.google.com/scho...
This is why there is no CCR, and why Fogerty gave up music entirely out of disgust after this lawsuit. We missed decades of great music from a genius that we'll never get back. Remember this the next time a record company tells you that piracy is theft.
I have never seen Pepsi claim their blind taste tests are fair. This makes their saying that more people pick Pepsi in their blind taste test perfectly legal. Though I still think it is deceptive.
I took the Pepsi blind taste test. I would even say that the cold, freshly opened Pepsi tasted slightly better than the warm Coke that had been opened over a hour ago. I ended up choosing the Pepsi because I all of a sudden got the craving for the Juicy Fruit that they give you only if you pick the Pepsi.
How do I know the Coke had been open for over 1 hour and the Pepsi was freshly opened? I asked the guy. He said it was policy not to cool the Coke and make sure it was open at least 1 hour. Though they would sometimes cheat and only have them open for 30 minutes when things got really busy. The Pepsi had to be cooled and they were not allowed to use it if it had been open more than 5 minutes.
As for the Juicy Fruit, that was common knowledge here at that time. If you choose Pepsi, you got it, if you choose Coke, you didn't.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
Intellectual property. System whereby the intellect of one person becomes the property of another.
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
Hey! We see that you used to work for us, and don't now, and we also see that you took your head full of knowledge with you when you left. We also see that you have since made boatloads of money. We believe we have a claim to your thoughts and ideas as a former employer, and are suing the other company for the rights to your head/thoughts/ideas. Actually, on second thought, we aren't interested in the ideas or thoughts, just the boatload of money (or at least a good percentage), as we really really like money too, and don't like the idea that you used to work for us and made us a little money, and now you work for someone else, and are making them a *lot* of money. We don't consider that other people working for your current company have contributed to the boatload of money (and quite frankly, we don't care). All we see are really interested in is the money coming our way now, and more in the future. Sincerely, Your Former Employer.
This is why like California, and one of the reasons the tech industry is out her (rather than, say, Boston). Non competes for ordinary workers are not enforceable. As long as he doesn't give his new company specific information, you are good. The skills you learned are yours. Around Route 128 (Boston), they sued people who switched jobs, people stopped, companies lost cross fertilization, and silicon valley cleaned their clocks. DEC, Wang, Prime, etc.
Plato seems wrong to me today
Are Zenimax the Sixers? Is it time they rename to IOI?
I just came out of the woodwork to say I was happy to purchase the original oculus vr, but with the crooked behavior I feel is taking this company down a very negative path, I will never purchase another product from them.
RAGE is an incredible technical feat. What I've heard is it doesn't have the GUI tools. Carmak still does everything from command line...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I'm biased but for some reason that sounds to me like someone saying they've never had air before, or water.
The Oculus has enough funding to lawyer up properly. Go patent troll someone else.
I seem to recall that they were very open about the transfer of Carmack to Facebook, I mean Occulus, would mean a technology transfer as well. Facebook turns everything to shit.
Just what original work has Carmack done in VR? All this VR stuff is decades old, there's very little truly original work in an Oculus Rift and what there is was not done by Carmack from what I can tell (sorry John, you're awesome but not original in this instance), so this claim is double nonsense.
How much do you know about John's work at Oculus? Just because VR has been done before, that doesn't mean that it can't be done better than before.
Anyway, all of 3D gaming is ancient, I was playing Elite on the BBC Micro in 1984. Therefore everything that has been done since then is unoriginal and derivative of Elite.
This smacks of a sneaky way to enforce a 'non competition' clause in an employees contract. Fortunately, in the UK, these are seen as a constraint on trade and are generally unenforceable.
While I agree with you in the whole being greater than the parts, I had been part of some great software teams, I don't agree that is "almost impossible to engineer", in fact it is very possible, this is what sports coaches do: create good teams.
You need a lot of knowledge about personality types, and psychology, and beliefs systems... and there are people that are "naturals" at doing it, like everything else, it is not that is impossible.
What happens is that when somebody buys someone else they mostly don't care about the team, they care about the brand "Bioware" or "Doom" and how to get more money out than what they get in, and they are really good at it. Most times they are better than founders at "monetizing" the thing, at least in the short term(which is what they care about, in 100 years everybody is dead).
They are very efficient in what they care about, if the company makes great software but does not make lots of money they don't want anything to do with it.
See "slide to unlock"
...which can be avoided by not requiring continuous contact with the screen, such as having a slowly-resetting (but "catchable") slider. All of the patent's claims note that the contact is continuous.
Or, if it is in the implementation like you say, and not just the idea, then I can do slide to unlock using a different algorithm in code than they used. Oh, that still falls under the patent doesn't it!
"bounce back when you reach the end of a list"
...which can be avoided by not showing the background behind the document (for example, by stretching the visible portion of the document so it remains filling the screen).
Or by using different code to "implement" the bounce back in my own way it should pass the patent lock-in, right? Oh yeah, sorry, it doesn't.
It sounds to me like you don't understand the problem at hand. Either that, or you are profiting from it.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
I agree with the Lord above!
Get free guides . I recommend [url=http://cheatsfreedownload.eu/brave-frontier-hack-cheats/]Brave Frontier Cheats tool[/
Problem: User interface is unclear as to whether document can't scroll more, or has just stopped responding.
Solution: Use an interface that changes behavior at the edge of the document.
Patented implementation: Document is allowed to move past its edge, then returns to a usable position
Alternate implementation: Document stretches to show that it can go no further
The "implementation" is the embodiment of the solution to the problem. It is not inherently a particular written work (as a single software program would be), nor is it an algorithm. It is the means by which the problem is mitigated.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.