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Oculus Accused of Destroying Evidence, Zuckerberg To Testify In $2 Billion Lawsuit (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: ZeniMax Media, the parent company of both Bethesda Softworks and Id Software, says it will prove at trial that John Carmack and others at Oculus stole trade secrets to "misappropriate" virtual reality technology that was first developed while Carmack was working at Id Software. What's more, ZeniMax is now accusing Oculus of "intentional destruction of evidence to cover up their wrongdoing." Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Oculus parent company Facebook, is scheduled to respond to those accusations in testimony starting tomorrow, according to a report by Business insider. ZeniMax's statement comes after Carmack testified at trial last week, saying the case was "ridiculous and absurd." His testimony echoed Oculus' initial reaction when ZeniMax's accusations first surfaced in 2014. In court filings leading up to the trial, ZeniMax detailed its case that Carmack, while still an employee at Id Software, "designed the specifications and functionality embodied in the Rift SDK and directed its development." Carmack's technology and guidance allegedly "literally transformed" Oculus founder Palmer Luckey's early Rift prototype from a "primitive virtual reality headset" that was "little more than a display panel." Carmack allegedly used "copyrighted computer code, trade secret information, and technical know-how" from his time at ZeniMax after he moved to Oculus as CTO in 2013. As the trial began last week (as reported by a Law360 summary, registration required), Carmack told the court of his development of a virtual reality demo for Doom 3 in 2012 and his search for a VR headset that would be suitable to run it. That's when he says he got in touch with Luckey, leading to the now legendary E3 2012 demo that introduced Oculus to the public. ZeniMax is seeking $2 billion in damage, which matches the value that Facebook paid for Oculus in 2014. The trial is expected to last three weeks.
Apart from the specific facts of what happened while Carmack was working on VR at Id Software.
It often happens that an employee starts investigating new technology that may not be directly tied to the company's existing products or plans. Typically, the employee will give demos and talks to management and other company employees, but the managers have a decision to make. It's one thing to allow one employee to go off on his own for six months looking into something which might be a breakthrough. It's another thing to assign a team of engineers, including management, marketing, UX and graphics, test, documentation, sysadmin, etc. and capital resources needed to bring the engineer's ideas to fruition. And all the while, there are corporate politics going on, with the "stock" of managers and engineers rising and falling in the firm. And people leave the company for better pastures.
If the company signs off on the project and says "Let's go!" then, great, chances are the engineer will hunker down and spend at least the next year or two trying to get the now fledgling project off the ground. But what if management balks, or worse, if they assign a manager who has very different ideas about what to do with the technology, and/or who should be the lead engineer? Certainly, the company has paid for the specs, drawings, prototypes and code that the engineer has developed to date, and properly owns them outright. But do they own what's in the engineer's head? Could HP's lawyers have gone after Stephen Wozniak in the '70s after Apple came out with a hit product?
They better have real evidence. If you filled a 100ft by 100ft room full of the smartest people on earth- Carmack would be in the room. That's big game hunting.
You don't sue a person like that- you make a deal. Because he doesn't need to win- it was his brain. He already won.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
John Carmack was simultaneously working for Oculus, ID Software, and not mentioned at all here is Armadillo Aerospace where he was even doing NASA contracts all at the same time. Trying to be Buckaroo Bonzai by doing everything at once is more than most normal people could do. It was about the time Zenimax took over ID Software that John Carmack wanted to continue doing this sort of multi-tasking, but they insisted he decide who he was going to work for exclusively.... and he told them to go take a hike.
If you are an engineering who is moonlighting on multiple side projects, it can definitely get a little bit fuzzy about what stuff you develop on your own time vs. what you develop for your employer. In Carmack's case, the previous management was a whole lot more open to him pretty much doing as much as he wanted to do and however he wanted to do it as long as they got a piece of the action. ID Software got the better end of the bargain in that situation and made a whole bunch of money off of the work that John Carmack was able to perform on their behalf.
That these asshats tried to kill the goose that laid golden eggs... is what they are pissed about. Even more because that goose flew away rather than them getting to eat goose for dinner and laid some golden eggs for somebody else instead that made billions of dollars for those investors.
If he had it in writing, this wouldn't be a lawsuit. Zenimax wouldn't make the very specific claims that they've made now, unless they felt like they had pretty rock solid evidence. When you're dealing with a more "he said, she said" legal tiff, the plaintiffs usually use language that gives the defendant an out. "We believe" or "It appears" or "we suspect" and "may" would show up in the accusations. That way, the defendant has an easier time publicity-wise saying "Whoops, someone goofed. Here's some money."
In this case, Zenimax is being very, very specific and has been from the start. They say Carmack took files from Zenimax owned systems and that is the *biggest* no-no in the book. It's entirely likely that Zenimax knew he was collaborating with Oculus and was fine with it, but that they didn't want anything Carmack did while working for them to *officially* become Oculus IP. And then, Carmack not only leaves, but if he took things *with* him, that's a pretty severe case of IP theft. Even if none of that code actually got directly used in Oculus products, if it was used as a basis for any component required by Oculus that Carmack had a hand in generating while he was at Zenimax, he's fucked himself.
The only way for Carmack to have done things cleanly was to have absolutely no possible hint that he would have done what Zenimax is claiming he did so he could claim that he used knowledge in his head but *not* anything produced while working for Zenimax beyond that. And if Zenimax is telling the truth, he fucked up that *one* job.
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