John Carmack's former employer claims he stole tech for Oculus VR when he left
engadget.com
engadget.com
it sounds to me like they are saying that John Carmack did VR work for Oculus while still at Id and then took his tech demo with him when he left Id/ZeniMax.
This seems like the kind of thing John had done in the past and no one cared when they were still Id software. Once they sold themselves, it seems like the parent company no longer considers this type of activity to be ok.
or put another way, it sounds like shades of Sergey Aleynikov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov), where a programmer does something he always does but once he leaves the company the company decides that they weren't cool with it after all.
Remember the whole Scrolls debacle? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrolls_%28video_game%29#Bethes... Apparently that was Bethesda Softworks, not Zenimax... but I wonder who was really behind it.
It's not really impossible to conceive that they might actually have a valid claim.
Unless recreating non-patented work from memory is actually forbidden? That would be horrible.
Here lies the black magic of the Non-Compete Agreement.
Nevertheless, this doesn't look like a Non-Compete Agreement violation, or we would probably have seen those words in the article. My guess is, Carmack haven't signed one (75% probability).
It's essentially writing new code looking at your old source code, and hence directly derivative of work that Zenimax has a reasonable claim to.
It is also possible to work back from first principles. Heck, many Free Software was written like that: by rewriting the proprietary parts, possibly one by one.
Paul Graham himself warned about this: he basically said that if you're thinking about launching a startup and are currently employed, you shouldn't write a single line of code, if only to be safe.
This state of affair is obviously twisted and wrong, but in this world, corporations have more say than the people. Of course they will push in that direction.
Imagine you're a chef. You design and cook menu items at your day job, then you go home and make pasta alfredo in your own way. You go to a new restaurant and you bring your pasta alfredo influence to it. Should restaurant 1 have any rights to the pasta alfredo you designed at home that was not even in use at their restaurant? Should restaurant 1 be able to charge you for making your pasta alfredo at home?
Obviously the big issue here is stealing code snippets or working on other products on the clock of another employer. But the blanket "anything you make while employed here at any capacity is ours" is just ridiculous and needs to go away.
Maybe it can go away if everyone just ignored it? :P
1 - If your employment contract says that the company owns 100% of your work unless otherwise approved, you have limited legal standing. This means all side projects must be approved, or the company owns it.
2 - Some employment contracts are more specific that they only own what happens during working hours. This can be tough if you work on a project during working hours, and they reject it. You definitely can't take the code with you, but you can keep what's in your head.
3 - If you pitch a side project done on your own time to a company who only owns what's produced during your working hours, then you have a right to take it with you if you offer it to them and they don't want it.
I actually don't consider #1 so awful. As a prospective employee you should negotiate it with a price. Similar to if someone wants a very long non-compete. It's only immorale if they spring it on you after you start. If they hand it to you during salary negotiations, then you can put a price on it, or go elsewhere. ("I'm happy to accept a 1 year non-compete, if you pay me 5% more, and give me 6 months severance if I'm fired for any reason, including with cause.")
It would be similar to saying a book writer who's main job is a typist would have to get his book approved (and potentially denied), or an artist would lose rights to his works he makes during his free time. It's out of this world wrong.
Note that - depending on the details - state law my trump one of those "We own your brain 100% of the time, 24x7" sort of agreements, even if you did sign it. There are states where the law simply does not permit an employer to enforce such an overly broad claim to an individual's intellectual output.
Now if the work in question was legitimately done on "work time", in the course of a work related initiative, then it seems clear that the IP does belong to the employer in most cases.
The question to me (coming at this as a non lawyer) is where the line is between "the IP" per-se and general knowledge and know-how that you absorb by osmosis over time, and which you clearly should not be restricted from accessing. IOW, if Programmer A learns to use a "for loop" during his first programming job, does that mean he can never use a "for loop" again? Obviously not...
3 - If you pitch a side project done on your own time to a company who only owns what's produced during your working hours, then you have a right to take it with you if you offer it to them and they don't want it.
That certainly seems like the way things should be. :-)
Just to play devils advocate here, sometimes it is the businessman with the idea and the programmers who implement the idea and create the tech. Should the Idea man get the rights or the "workers" digging the trench.
A lot of large companies have policies that anything you make in your off time is owned by them. I can see why they do it my company has probably spent thousands on training and employee development and they want the return.
It may not be a popular thing for some people (including myself) but I see why they do it.
And that's just wrong, plain and simple. There's no excuse this is allowed.
> I can see why they do it my company has probably spent thousands on training and employee development and they want the return.
Training someone is not a valid claim to all uses of those skills; off-time is off-time. Just because someone applies a skill they learned at work in their off-time in no way justifies the company owing that work.
What's to stop me from directly copying what I am doing at work and trying to compete with them? It wouldnt be fair if every employee you hired could just quit then rip you off once they figured out everything.
Fortunately my company has a process where you can legally clear your side projects as long as it isnt in conflict or competes with the company.
> What's to stop me from directly copying what I am doing at work and trying to compete with them? It wouldnt be fair if every employee you hired could just quit then rip you off once they figured out everything.
That's theft, copying is not the same thing as rewriting in your own time.
> The proprietary ... know-how Mr. Carmack developed when he was a ZeniMax employee ... are owned by ZeniMax.
1) He refused John Carmack's pitch for a new project. Stupid.
2) That got his best employee to quit the company and start a new one. Double stupid.
3) That new company he has no rights to was worth $2 billion a year and a half later. Management-level stupid. (note I don't care what it's "value" is, someone paid 2 billion for it, that makes it worth 2 billion)
And now of course, the lawyer wants some money. It isn't fair that something I could have had but didn't want was sold for $2 billion ! Obviously they owe me for the idea !
I have a 2 year old daughter that has this sort of behaviour too. I also have a 5 year old daughter, who has grown out of it (that wasn't easy, let me tell you). I'd expect the CEO of a legal company to ...
Dammit I almost got through that last sentence without laughing ... and crying.
I've typed and erased this response 3 times because I tend to wander, but the I think what irks me the most about things like this is that they will end up concentrating on some physical object, like some code that he created in his spare time while still under their employment.
They won't even acknowledge the fact that this is a titan of productivity and a genius programmer who could probably conjure up anything he's written in the past N decades given an afternoon.
It seems a lot more likely to me that he felt he was entitled to spend his time however he saw fit and did the VR work during work hours. I doubt if it would have even occurred to him to differentiate between "work time" and "time off".
This is where the "just sign it" attitude is going to bite some people.
Was adapted into a big budget 2003 movie.
If they expect "the proprietary ... know-how" and experience of all employees to remain confidential, then surely they can't have expected him to use any of the knowledge he gained working anywhere else previously, when he started working for them.
If that's the case, employing Carmack gains you nothing over employing a fresh new graduate, except that it costs a heck of a lot more.
Or are they just another bunch of fucking hypocrites?
When I read this, my thoughts went to all the smart people who created something awesome while employed at a company and were never personally credited.
I mean, so much of our discourse is tied up in exchanging opinions of companies rather than individuals.
Feels a bit strange now I come to think of it. Having all these overbearing hierarchical organisations of people, that end up directly or indirectly controlling large parts of your life.
John Carmack's 'know-how' is owned by ZeniMax? Absurd.
If you're paid hourly, then there's a clear demarcation between working hours and not, being a salaried employee blurs that line. That's why many states have regulations as to who can be salaried and how.
Another is that this is simply morally wrong, and we shouldn't accept that simply being salaried implies that all intellectual work you do is owned by the employer.
This is a matter of convention, expectation, and interpretation, not rules. Powerful corporations are fighting for the interpretation that most benefits them at the cost of those who are weaker. That's not crazy; it's wrong.
I don't know what third-world despot you've gotten stockholm syndrome for, but that is absolutely not true. Salaried employees can, and often do, have second jobs, run their own businesses, from restaurants to real estate ventures.
You are not the property of your employer. Salaried employment is an arrangement which cannot legally demand more than 40 hours of you. It often does, but I'd actually argue in those cases that the agreement is in breach and not binding at all.
Just because some states have stricter guidelines on how these lines can be drawn does not mean that you are ever the property of your employer.
As someone with roots from a "third-world despot", this is pretty offensive. I can say pretty confidently, that such practices do not exist there.
Just another normal day in the "first world", eh?
Salaried employment isn't contingent on any hour requirement whatsoever. I could work 1 hour a week and still legally qualify for my salary. My employer could give me enough work to require that I stay in the office for 80-100h, and I would have to do so to fulfill the job duties.
I in no way stated that exempt employees can't have other employment. I have always maintained a consulting practice while working - what I can't believe is that people don't get it in writing that they are doing this, and carve out the things that their employer doesn't get to touch. Exemption/Exclusion clauses work both ways. It avoids this situation altogether. For a computer professional who branches out into other semi related tasks, I would consider this essential. Plus, I think that there's a large difference between something completely out of your field (like the real estate and restaurant ventures mentioned) and another software/gaming company.
Not to mention that Carmack was an employee of a company he owned, id, that was later acquired. I doubt he even has an exclusionary provision that he'd signed that was anything but very friendly to how he likes to operate if at all.
[0] https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/461918500307472384
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/05/id-software-parent-sta...
The letters from ZeniMax's lawyers came after Facebook struck its deal to acquire Oculus, part of the company's efforts to leap from a social-media platform to a major player in the race with Google Inc., Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. to be at the forefront of Internet use.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230394810...
But:
> ZeniMax provided necessary VR technology and other valuable assistance to Palmer Luckey and other Oculus employees in 2012 and 2013 to make the Oculus Rift a viable VR product, superior to other VR market offerings.
My guess: it sounds like John Carmack began an informal relationship with Luckey and Oculus, and possibly wrote some code for or advised them while he was still at iD. If so, Zenimax is likely legally in the right. Yikes.
My guess is that Zenimax wants to get access to the source to go on a fishing expedition.
Still, the point stands that this isn't unprecedented. John Carmack's has, in the past, just helped out potential competitors before.
He's friendly and is exactly the sort of engineer that helps teach others how to do things--just look at the GPL releases of all the old Quake stuff when it came out (back in the 90s!).
Back in the day id programmers shared snippets of code with whoever they wanted - they didn't need to ask any corporate overseer for permission. There were a few little bits found when the GarageGames/Tribes engine code was first released, for example. (pretty sure they got those lines of code from Brian Hook, but it's been a long time...)
That's the key word, isn't it.
If the Oculus guys weren't absolutely clear about who owned what, and what the patents were, then they're screwed.
By which I mean, they will for sure be embroiled in a long and costly legal battle, unless they settle.
Oh right, AA isn't worth $2B.
Either they should fire the people handling PR or talk to them before doing dumb shit.