Slashdot Mirror
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.
Doesn't need to steal shit. These ppl need to shut the fuck up.
We have a malvertising campaign right here.
We wan to fuck n1gger ass, suck n1gger dick and felch cum from n1gger assholes. And we wan to share our n1gger dicks, assholes and lips with all of YOU!
Welcome to the world of Gay N1GGERDOM, with LORD OBAMA and our chief DOWN LOW CLOSET HOUSE N1GGER!
He fucks ass and licks up HIV and AIDS and HEPATITUS blood like it was grape soda.
Now use my watermelon jolly ranchers on a strong as anal beads and fuck my ass N1GGERS!
flip a coin. they're all testifying.
It seems to me that the core team that made id what it is today have all the left company on bad terms.
Zuckerberg suing John Carmack for stealing code? WTF?
Man if this world gets any more back-to-front soon dogs will be walking people !
Doom3 code is open source. Therefore, VR code is open source.
Seems that you've got the reading down, but your comprehension could use a little work.
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?
None of the entertaining quotes from Carmack?
One line of questioning asked whether Carmack knew about a âoesecret meetingâ in a hotel room with Oculus co-founders Nate Mitchell and Palmer Luckey, to which Carmack responded âoeNo I didnâ(TM)t, it was a secret.â A MacBook was brought up during questioning as well, with the lawyer asking why it was never wiped, with Carmack responding: âoeI am not a Mac user unless under duress.â
http://uploadvr.com/john-carma...
rich people steals shit because no one would believe that they did.
And people will be following the dogs to clean up the dog poop.
Why didn't he just turn the stolen goods into a social media website? Nobody seems to care who steals those right?
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.
If the Instagram and Whatsapp overtures are taken into account, that could loosely translate into tens of dollars.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Unless Oculus has a computer with Zenimax owned code on it or exact copies of blueprints/CAD stolen from Zenimax, this is just the lawyers lining their pockets. Slavery is illegal in the US. If you can't retain your employees, you lose the knowledge between their ears. Outside of patented ideas, they can and do take their knowledge to their next employer. This is like suing a software engineer's new company because he worked on GPS mapping software at his old and new company, it's just ridiculous.
This case should be slapped down hard with 10x punitive damages on Zenimax along with paying for Oculus court costs for filing a frivolous lawsuit.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
The Social Network 2:
Zuckerberg Gets Deposed About a Bunch More Shit
Nothing posted to
I remember back when Carmack was with id Software (owned by Bethesda by that point), and he was pretty vocal in the community about wanting to get VR to work. At the time, he was using one of the very early prototypes he put together (no a Rift), and made quite a few comments about how tracking really needs work, and talked about how he was hacking together solutions to make it better, etc.. About a year later, he demos Doom 3 BFG at E3 with an Oculus prototype with improved headtracking in the game. And a year after that, he was working for Oculus.
from the tone and language of your post, you sir are a closeted homosexual.
it's 2017, just be who you are already and lose the hate.
Palmer Luckey wasn't a "tech innovator"...he was a rich geek who frequented VR modding message boards, and just like everyone else took a smartphone screen and hooked it to community-made VR software
Occulus has always been more about hype than actual tech...that's fine as it goes...if I could start a hype driven company and get it purchased by Facebook for Billions I'd do it, but lets' not pretend or let marketing people write the history.
I'm not surprised at all that Occulus is being accused of doing this...doesn't mean it's true...but on the face of it, this fits with Occulus' modus operandi since it was just Palmer Luckey posting on message boards
Thank you Dave Raggett
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.
The first two would be bad, but you can't stop someone from using their expertise when changing jobs.
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..."
Idiot, hating stupid perverts fags is not the same as being a fag. You fags try harder to convert decent straight people into your abominal sect of castrated sheep. Kill yourself.
I have had the data related to this matter in my systems for the last two years.
I have no idea who is going to come out on top, or whether either side has any merit to their litigation.
I just keep the systems running. What the business does with them is their business. And apparently of interest to the readers of Arstechnica and Slashdot.
QUAD DAMAGES!!!
... and if by some miracle it survives and thrives, then try to grab what you think you can.
I have great respect for Carmack. He's given every engine he has ever worked on away to the opensource community. I see Carmack as on of the few people with real ethics and vision in the gaming industry. I can't imagine a better scenario than him getting 2 billion dollars from a monstrous surveillance engine like Facebook.
pagol
" www.pagol.com "
Stop with this stupidity. A company is not a living thing. It cannot talk. It is not ZeniMax talking. There are single individuals doing the talking and other individuals giving them scripts to read out loud.
Do not let people hide behind their organizations.
Quote: "Carmack allegedly used '[...] technical know-how'"
OMG, wait, OOOOMMMMFFFFGGGG!!!!
Seriously, were they expecting Carmack to be brainwashed so he couldn't use anything he has learnt?
Id Software hasn't made 2billion in it's lifetime. Yet Zenimax is asking for 2billion for a little piece of code that Carmack wrote while still being employed at Id Software. This company is bad.
F**K zenimax!
BOYCOTT zenimax
LONG LIVE OCULUS!
What is this *contract* of which you write?
The vast majority of employees have no contract - they are employed at will. Tomorrow you could hear "you're fired" and be out the door with nothing.
Employees are often subject to the terms of an employee handbook which is not a contractual obligation (no "meeting of minds", no "offer and acceptance", etc.), and which can be changed unilaterally by the employer.
It is true that technology workers in California often will sign some sort of "assignment of rights" and "pre-existing IP disclosure" forms when being hired on. And, in California (where this litigation is taking place), there's fairly clear laws about "working on stuff at home not being property of employer", although the employer may get a "shop right" to use IP developed with their information/resources without having to pay a fee.
Carmack supposedly 'appropriated' Carmack's Reverse from a lecture given by a guy at Creative Labs' (who had patented it before giving the lecture, if I remember correctly!)
And Carmack, Romero and one or two others violated their employment contract with SoftDisk by producing their early games (I forget what, Commander Keen and maybe something else?) and publishing them independently while under contract to SoftDisk as programmers.
So just based off those two items without getting into anything else, I would say it is not out of line to believe Carmack might do this, although one would have hoped given his age, financial status, and social stature, that he would be mature, responsible, and professional enough to not have done so.
captcha was 'baseless'... Sure hope so. If not it is just one rung further fallen down the ladder from being an Indie gaming legend during the 90s and early '00s.
Oh come onnn..., I got VR headset as a present by Oculus, way to try to put a bummer on it. Why the negativity of such a new technology? Should there not be more concern for the public interest than a company's claim to one guy's work?
Everyone know VR Jesus (Palmer) invented it in a garage. There was nothing before Palmer came up with VR.
I love how contracts can state they have a right to what you dont even know yet. Everyone want a piece of the upcoming VR/AR revolution.
This reminds me of telling my friends in the mid 80's of going "online" and getting commodore games and software. All I hears is online is a fad, its for nerds only. :-)
I hear the same crap about VR/AR. In 20 years all glasses will be connected and VR/AR will me mainstream, but now its a fad its only for nerds
Zenimax loses it's star employee to a better offer so the board decides to tarnish ex-employee's reputation and possibly get a sizable settlement from a company with the deepest moat. Any settlement offer will oblige Oculus to hand over it's source code -- who's stealing again?
this is the reason I never installed the native develoment kit for android in my pc, because anything that I would start to develop would be stolen by facebook motherfucker hipsters.
My how trollish.... I'm sure there's a special place in hell for pedists
Anyhow the point of my comment is that Zuckerberg is a thief not a programmer. John Carmack is a legendary programmer, not a thief.
Yes the suit is actually between companies... but the accusation is leveled at Carmack. The notion that a guy with his talents needs to steal code is completely absurd.
But, the suit is from Id, not Facebook.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?