Slashdot Mirror
Zenimax Sues Oculus Over VR Tech
An anonymous reader writes "We had hints at this when Zenimax accused John Carmack of stealing 'proprietary technology and know-how,' but now it's official: Zenimax is suing Oculus VR over its virtual reality headset technology. 'According to a statement released by Zenimax, the lawsuit was filed over what it perceives to be the defendants' illegal exploitation of intellectual property, including "trade secrets, copyrighted computer code, and technical know-how relating to virtual reality technology" that was developed by Zenimax. Zenimax is also seeking to take Oculus and Luckey to task for breach of contract, unjust enrichment, and unfair competition. Zenimax continues to claim that it provided IP to Oculus under a legal agreement that it would be owned exclusively by ZeniMax and could not be "used, disclosed, or transferred to third parties without Zenimax's approval."'"
The universe has been in 3-D for like 30 billion years.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
they didn't want to do it.
and I fail to see what they provided. maybe they think that carmack(and therefore them) invented 3d->2d projection calculations(oculus tech works just fine without anything that could have been zenimax property).
furthermore, zenimax(through carmack, or through contracts) promised me doom 3 with my oculus rift and never delivered(technically apparently now by not giving devtime for it). fuck 'em.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The older stories I read talked about it being over John Carmack, and though that was BS.
If the last line is correct, I think they have every right to sue.
Looks like Zenimax is just jealous of Oculus' buyout.
Looks like ZeniMax's argument is that since Carmack used ZeniMax equipment, that all work done by him is owned by ZeniMax.
They might win this on a technicality aka, literalism.
Between this, horse armor, claiming all rights to the use of the word "scrolls," the extended lawsuit with Interplay over Fallout Online: Zenimax is a terrible company.
People should not buy their stuff, but as always seems to happen in the games industry - if people like your games, you can get away with anything. Blizzard, Activision, Sony, Microsoft... remember this? That picture is the reason I gave up on fighting against DRM. I still don't buy games that require activation, but I realize now that I'm always going to be in the minority.
Perhaps Carmack should challenge them to a trial by combat, on Quake using the Occulus Rift. I bet Notch would assist.
It's probably opposite.
That is, they wern't a target until they paired up with a company that could pay out massive damages should they win.
Technical know-how belongs to the person who's brain holds it. It can not be transferred.
Unless John Carmack copied the source code of Zenimax, there is no copyright issue. If you want to stop someone writing code that does the same thing as your code, you file an absurdly stupid patent.
They may have something on trade secrets, depends what they considered secret.
Zenimax are the morons who paid an absolute fortune to buy the failing iD software developer. At the time, all but the most moronic Carmack fan-boys knew that iD was in the most dire straits, with Carmack having burnt through an insane amount of money working on the dreadful idtech5 engine and Rage. iD was a joke for its complete inability to produce even a half-decent game design, and Carmack's last engine, the one behind the very mediocre Doom 3 game, had been a total failure (only one external use of the licence- Prey).
After buying iD, Zenimax allowed Bethesda (their gaming arm) to give Caramck and the other iD head honchos another small fortune to create two massive internal iD teams. To date, the sum total of output from these two teams (now down-sized to a one smaller unified team) has been Rage (the same game iD had spent years on BEFORE being bought out). They didn't even port idtech5 to directX (hence the dreadful problems the current Wolfenstein game is having running on current PCs). Even Doom 4 actually made NEGATIVE progress (so the game is currently less progressed than when iD was bought out). .
Carmack was seen as part of the 'problem', and Zenimax was clearly happy to have him 'sod off' to Oculus VR while still under contract.
As Carmack now 'proudly' (?) boasts, his time at Oculus VR, while under contract to Bethesda, gave Oculus VR nothing of value- and Carmack should know.
Zenimax wants blood, and NOT because of their dishonestly stated events at Oculus VR. No, Zenimax is out for blood over having been 'conned' in the first place with the iD buy-out. Accept, as I said at the top, Zenimax wasn't conned but chose to buy a company every sane and informed person knew was worse than useless. Zenimax should have paid iD for exclusive rights to the gaming IP (Quake, Doom, Wolfenstein, ET multiplayer) and NOTHING ELSE. This way Bethesda could have found reliable third-part software houses to work on new versions of these games using the Unreal engine. iD would have gained a nice lump sum, and Zenimax would have started with a clean slate.
Zenimax now attacks Oculus VR as a proxy, and this is the worst strategy imaginable. Caramack is open and honest, and very intelligent to boot. He will have given Zenimax's lawyers less than zero to work with. And this means Facebook will be extremely unlikely to want to settle (and Zenimax wants too large a pay-off anyway, to cover their iD loses). Indeed, I imagine Facebook is chomping at the bit to give Zenimax a very sound 'spanking' indeed.
The courts in the USA consider such issues using contract law first, second and third. Zenimax has made it clear that the contracts that do exist refer to theoreticals that never actually came into play. And worse, Zenimax, of its own choosing, decided NOT to seek monetary remuneration of any significant amount for Carmack's work for Oculus VR, while under contract. The old "we'll do the work for you, and THEN we'll decide what to charge you" is an unlawful form of business practice in every first-world nation.
Zenimax will have to show ACTUAL, registered IP of its ownership in current Oculus VR business, and that is impossible, because it doesn't exist. So Zenimax will fall back on the nebulous, non-legal argument that because "Carmack is a genius", and "Facebook bought Oculus VR for 2 billion after Carmack's involvement", Carmack's 'input' (whatever that may have been) was 'instrumental' and therefore since Carmack was Zenimax's wage-slave for at least some of this period, Zenimax is entitled to a giant slice of the pie- innit.
The great thing about the USA is that you can find a lawyer willing to take your money to argue ANY nonsense in court, and keep doing so while the fees keep flowing. Sometimes a judge takes pity, and advises the suckers paying for the creep that they have literally ZERO chance of winning early on- but usually everyone involved with the system simply sits back and sucks on the teat of corporate idiocy.
The shaming part? Zenimax could use its money inst
It's the pair up that is the base of the lawsuit, if Oculus hadn't sold itself to whomever there wouldn't be a problem, but they sold itself without first consulting Zenimax in regard to the tech.. Let's not forget, Carmack worked on the oculus while he was still working for Zenimax, and appearantly there is an agreement/contract about it..
So it's not like they didn't sue before because they didn't think there was any money to be had, but they didn't sue because there was no 'contract'breach, only after Oculus sold itself to Facebook there was a 'contract'breach..
I really, really hope that Oculus gets basically shut down as a company. That would mean the most damage ever done to Facebook would be by Facebook itself, which would be hilarious and not remotely surprising. After they privacy violations and what an unbearable douchebag their CEO is, they deserve it.