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Oculus: ZeniMax Claims Over Rift Tech Are "False"
An anonymous reader writes "Unsurprisingly, Oculus VR has denied claims that John Carmack stole technology when he left Zenimax. From the article: 'Oculus VR just sent across an email outlining in seven points what it views as ZeniMax's specious claims about Doom-creator John Carmack and Oculus' virtual reality technology. Last week, ZeniMax accused Oculus VR Chief Technology Officer (and former id Software Doom mastermind) John Carmack of taking "proprietary technology and know-how" with him when he departed the Rockville, Maryland-based Elder Scrolls and Dishonored publisher for a job with Oculus.'"
The company that makes Elder Scrolls? Did he steal their new crash every five minutes no matter how many years they spend developing the game technology?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
In my state, there is no such thing as proprietary know-how. If you don't want someone taking their experience elsewhere, you pay them more, if you don't like that, you're in the wrong state. Of course, this state also has a habit of completely nullifying non-compete clauses that are ridiculous as well, for instance a non-compete clause that extends beyond the state boundaries will almost certainly be completely ignored by the courts. My former employer found out the hardware when they wrote my non-compete as a nation wide non-compete. The court didn't say it was limited to NC or local, it flat out nullified the whole non-compete and released me from my obligations to it across the board.
They don't take kindly on trying to turn someone into a slave, which is ironic considering I'm in 'the south'
Stealing code or any data is a different story, but if Carmack had some special experience in his brain that he took with him, Zenimax could go fuck themselves.
Note: My state is not involved in any of this, just throwing it out there.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
You mean you can buy a company but can't own it's employees?
Zenimax is mad because their assets are leaving. Don't blame John. Who'd want to work for a boring publisher who prefers bland and safe over real innovation. Dude's just bored. He's always been on the leading edge of pushing new game tech and innovations. Not saying he's always right or successful, but he's always leading edge. Remember when he was talking about mobile gaming years and years before smartphones existed? Did you know there's a J2ME elder scrolls game?
If the bland-and-boring-and-derivative-as-shit elder scrolls MMO is a sign of anything, he got out at the right time.
Uh... no. This has been going on since 2012. Media outlets picked up on it last week, but reality doesn't flow by MSM's knee-jerk attention span.
How could this be the end of Carmack?
There's no question on the quality of his work.
Worst case scenario he loses some of the bonus he got when Facebook took over Occulus.
You took my ball!
No we didn't.
Yes you did!
No we didn't.
MOM!!!
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
I fail to understand how "know-how" can be proprietary or stolen. If "know-how" could be stolen, then it would be theft to hire anyone who has ever worked elsewhere.
From the previous story, http://games.slashdot.org/story/14/05/01/1943218/zenimax-accuses-john-carmack-of-stealing-vr-tech,
"The proprietary technology and know-how Mr. Carmack developed when he was a ZeniMax employee, and used by Oculus, are owned by ZeniMax."
Is any "know-how" that I acquire in one job and take to another thus "stolen"? Is everything I learned at my university not legally transferable to doing the business of an employer? I think ZeniMax's lawyers need to go back to law school.
They should of erased his memory before allowing him to leave with their proprietary brainwaves ... ref
Nothing to see here. Move along. While litigation by press release is common (see: Apple vs Samsung), it rarely does more than potentially move the trial to a different venue. Typically, these employment disagreements (high profile individual moving to (potential) competitor) result in a pre-trial settlement that both claim as a victory (after paying lots of legal fees; the only ones who win are the lawyers).
"Hey look that company we've been watching hoping to extort money from via the courts has enough money to make it worth our time now"
As a Maryland resident, I can tell you the politics out here lean very heavily towards copy-catting all the legislation Washington D.C. can come up with. A good chunk of Maryland consists of areas with a very different political feel, but those tend to be the parts of the state that "don't matter" as far as wielding influence that shapes the state legislation.
Montgomery County, for example, sits next to the D.C. area, and may as well serve as an extension of D.C. (Maryland actually sold some of its land to form the District of Columbia in the first place.) Most of Maryland's wealthy and influential live someplace in Montgomery County. Rockville, MD is a big part of Montgomery County, along with Bethesda, Potomac and Chevy Chase.
The area is VERY litigious as well. Everyone's quick to call a lawyer if they feel they've been wronged with anything from a public school's decision to fights over perceived workplace wrongs. So yes, given this climate, it's no surprise at all that Maryland would be really big on such garbage as the "non compete clauses".
is symptomatic of the United States of America, where greed and profits come first hand.
If they want to get a return they have to actually, oh, I don't know... take a risk?
Nice try, American McGee!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Oculus VR denied claims that John Carmack stole Zenimax technology. From the article: 'Last week, ZeniMax accused John Carmack, Oculus VR Chief Technology Officer and former id Software Doom mastermind, of taking "proprietary technology and know-how". Oculus VR countered ZeniMax's claims in a seven-point statement. John Carmack departed Zenimax, the Rockville, Maryland-based publisher of Elder Scrolls and Dishonored, for a job with Oculus, the Irvine, California-based producer of the Oculus Rift VR Headset.'"
Fixed the summary and the article it quoted from.
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Every tech journalist ran with the 'weasel words' of Zenimax's lawyers, and created headlines and articles that COMPLETELY misrepresented Zenimax's position. Let me spell out what Zenimax very carefully stated.
1) Carmack worked with Oculus VR while still a pained employee of Zenimax.
2) Carmack's contract with Zenimax gave Zenimax ABSOLUTE ownership of everything iD and everything computer related from the mind of Carmack.
3) Zenimax and Oculus VR signed an agreement that recognised some nebulous form of point 2.
4) Oculus recognised the concept of paying Zenimax something for Carmack's 'work' but Zenimax never got around to finalising a 'bill'.
5) Zenimax claims that Carmack, with his code and ideas, helped Oculus VR at a key stage in its history- Zenimax NEVER claimed that Carmack's code continued in use at Oculus VR after Carmack formally left Zenimax.
6) Zenimax claims that Carmack's input, in all its forms, was a major part of Oculus VR reaching the position that made it a worthwhile two billion dollar purchase by Facebook.
7) Again, Zenimax NEVER claimed that any IP owned by Zenimax, through Carmack, is currently at play at Oculus VR, or in its current products.
So, Zenimax is suing Oculus because of historic involvement of their 'assets' in Oculus VR's buisness 'growth'- an involvement that Zenimax willingly, of its own free will, happily permitted with ZERO contractual statement of expected remuneration.
I would point out to the owners of Zenimax that by allowing their lawyers to carefully construct 'weasel words' so every loud mouth on-nothing tech journalist would start spouting nonsense about "stolen code" has hurt Zenimax's case in the court of public opinion irrevocably. While the usual shills will say "so what, it is a court that will decide", playing such a moronic dirty game shows that the lawyers are hopeless from day one.
Zenimax wants ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS PLUS to pay for the losses they incurred when they bought iD. Facebook, even under better circumstances, would have only been prepared to bung them a fraction of this figure to make them go away. Now Zenimax has made this personal, and wrongly impugned the reputation of Oculis VR and Carmack (both of whom have squeaky clean hands), Facebook will act to give Zenimax an appropriate 'spanking', both in public and in court.
I seem to remember a case from the middle 90's where an engineer for a ... phone? company came up with an interesting idea for a software-based filter. He talked to a co-worker about it who agreed it could be good, and took it to his superiors. They decided not to pursue it. A year later, he left the company, and he decided to go ahead and write that software - he knew a lot of folks who'd pay for it.
He was still 2 or 3 months from completing it when his old company heard about it. They sued him, claiming that he had the idea on company time, they could cite that he discussed it with a co-worker (so it was 'developed') and they claimed ownership. He lost his case. The judge had him not only turn over his source code, build environment, and all rights, but made him finish the product and deliver it to the company, with threats of fines or jail time if he acted maliciously (like making it impossible to run, or obfuscated, or anything other than delivering a finished product in a reasonable time frame).
Searching on google now for these terms just gets me lots of hits for 'bully bosses' and 'henry ford' for some reason, but ... precedent is out there. I just can't find it.
The upshot is this... If he discussed ideas he had while at Zenimax with anyone else, and those ideas were shared with Oculus, even if they're not patentable or Zenimax had no desire to implement them, they may have a very good case.
Of course, I'm not a lawyer, so I may be bull-poopooing you inadvertently.
You are WRONG. Zenimax's legal position, as clear in their legal statements when one identifies the claimed facts, states that John Carmack's ideas and code were essential during a key period in Oculus VR history. They do NOT claim this input continues to this day as used code or recognisable patents.
Zenimax is using the DIVORCE argument when a wife claims 50%+ of a career man's assets. America recognises the nebulous input of a wife's 'talents' to a man's career, and claims these 'inputs' entitle her to 50% of what he has created in his business life. So, Zenimax is stating that since they made a major input into the growth of Oculus VR, regardless of what you label that input, or how long that input usefully continued, they deserve a sizeable chunk of Facebook's TWO BILLION.
This will be laughed out of court. It is an old lawyer trick, usually witnessed in Hollywood. But the USA recognises CONTRACT LAW above all other concepts when it comes down to the dealing of businesses with one another. Does Zenimax have any useful contracts with Oculus VR? No. Was Zenimax 'tricked' into providing Carmack or his 'services'? No. Did Zenimax have ample opportunity for creating a contract between themselves and Oculus VR at the time, detailing remuneration? Yes. Did Zenimax have any excuse for not bothering with such a contract? No.
Remember, Oculus VR was purchased AFTER Carmack had legally separated in every way from his obligations to Zenimax (which resulted from the sale of iD).
There is one curious factor about this case. Oculus VR can honestly state that there is NOTHING innovative about Oculus Rift in any sense. The product is a standard off-the-shelf LCD panel with crude, pre-existing optics attached. The software driving it is all obvious, mostly third-party, and does nothing new. The motion tracking is a dreadful, laggy, use of standard motion sensors- again no invention. Facebook bought a dog, and Carmack (with others) got very much richer. But Zenimax is going to find it impossible to point to significant specifics that Carmack bought to Oculus VR.
Zenimax claim ONE thing only- that Carmack's input to Oculus VR, at a key moment in that company's history, helped grow Oculus VR into a company Facebook wanted to pay two billion dollars to purchase. Zenimax very deliberately does NOT say anything about any specifics of this 'assistance, just that carmack was under contract to Zenimax while providing this assistance.
Put another way, they are saying "everyone knows Carmack is a genius, so obviously his input at Oculus VR must have made all the difference". This is as far from a valid legal argument as it is possible to get. Tracy Ullman tried the same thing, when she tried to grab a large part of the value of "The Simpsons", simply because "The Simpsons" originally appeared as short segments on the "Tracy Ullman Show". She argued "we were responsible for their success, so we are part owners of The Simpsons". The laughter in court was heard around the world.
I can see this situation playing out in a lot of companies
Employee: Hey, I've got this [great idea]. It's innovative and likely to be popular. Here's how it works.
Corp: Sounds nice, but there's no guarantee it'll make money. Instead we'll just put out a sequel [game] 2 or perhaps introduce [new game] based on [game]'s existing technology. Maybe we'll get to your idea eventually
Employee: OK, we've done that. Now about that idea
Corp: Sorry, we'll need you to work on [game] 3 now. But look, it's got prettier graphics
Employee: I'm outta here. Nobody listens to my suggestions and so I'm going to [NewCorp] who is interested in my ideas
Corp: Hey, NewCorp implemented [great idea] and is making money off of them. We should sue because obviously they stole it from us.
I see what you did there ...
The idea that the primary mastermind behind 3D gaming and 3D accelerated instructions, not to mention one of the most recognized names in all of computing, would have stolen ideas from a "who's that?" company is just absurd.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
taking "proprietary technology and know-how" with him
Look, if you forgot to administer the mind-wipe when he left the company, that's your own look-out.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
this is john carmack we're talking about. maybe you've heard of him.
sooo sorry you ended up with a cup of water, while oculus vr got a fountain.
HAHAHAHAHA, that's funny.
Let me know when you can kill Mirak on PC without using the console.
They're becoming a new EA. First they tried to sue Mojang because their game Scrolls had the word "scroll" in it. Now this. The Scumbag company is now making lame MMOs instead of the amazing SP games they used to in an attempt to pump as much money out of the customer as possible. It's only downhill from here on.
I unplugged the Oculus when Zuck tock over and threw it in the junk pile. I had completely forgotten about it. Is this the type of news we are to expect about Oculus now? Legal junk? Did creativity just die at Occulus with the sale?
How about treating them as humans instead of cogs of a machine? They won't leave if you pay them as much as they could get elsewhere and le tthem do the thing they do. If you can't turn that into a profit why would you want to keep him anyway, you are obviously not a company that can turn innovation into profit. Just keep selling whatever you are selling.
If someone leaves to make a startup you are compensating them wrong, or are calculating the risk differently than they are. Or are just plain boring riks averse old company that gets nothing done and moves so slowly glaziers outpace you.