Zenimax Sues Oculus
zenimax.com
zenimax.com
Throwaway because zenimax is sue-happy and I work
at id Software, and I don't want to lose my job.
A while back there was an artist here who made
some artwork for Valve's Team Fotress 2 Hat
contest in their spare time. This artist ended up
winning and received a large amount of money from
royalties. Zenimax got pissed off that this person
was earning money from what they felt like was
"Their property". The rumor was that they were
about to sue them, but ended up backing off. I'm
not sure why.
This individual left the company shortly after. I
don't blame them.
We've been loosing top-notch talent left and right
ever since the Zenimax purchase, but more so after
RAGE didn't do too well. We're alright now, but I
really believe that this is no longer the place
that it was when I started years ago. The office
culture sucks ass, and unless you're keen to
sticking your nose up certain people's asses, or
have been here since the days when we could
actually ship games, then you're not going to get
very far.
I think Zenimax is mostly to blame for this. Fuck
them.
EDIT: Who would want to work someplace that will aggressively assert rights over your personal projects?
Let's assume Carmack happened to work on VR within a Zenimax office. We're talking about someone who created Armadillo Aerospace. If Carmack felt like developing VR outside of Zenimax offices, he obviously could have. So it must be true that Zenimax didn't actually help VR in any substantial way. Carmack's VR development just happened to take place within a Zenimax building. And now they're going after him for it, while playing it off like VR wouldn't have existed without Zenimax's contributions.
EDIT2: What convinced me was a thought experiment: imagine Zenimax without Carmack. Now think of all the ways that our imaginary entity could possibly contribute to the development of VR. At best, our entity provided a building for Carmack to pursue his personal interests in (a "mad scientist lab," as the Complaint calls it). Maybe some marketing, but who would deny that the hype would have rolled in regardless of whatever Zenimax did to help it along? Two seconds looking through a Rift is enough to transform anyone into an evangelist. The VR ball began rolling due to the efforts of Carmack, not Zenimax.
So, let's say you're Zenimax. You have Carmack working for you, working on all kinds of cool projects; whatever interests him. Choose your adventure:
- Stand to benefit by the halo effect of having a living legend on your payroll; a legend who gets the entire gamedev industry interested in projects happening at your company. Attract top talent by virtue of the buzz, and a creative's natural desire to be a part of cool projects. Your new top talent goes on to create many millions of dollars of value for your company.
- Try to assert control over whatever Carmack makes. Make it abundantly clear that no personal projects will be tolerated by any employee on Zenimax's payroll. Show the world that no one can work for you unless their sole ambition is to be a Zenimax employee. Convince every young hotshot college grad that it's a bad idea to go work for you. Lose whatever momentum you would have gained by attracting top talent.
I don't understand why you're so surprised that a company sued after they were turned down for a settlement from a company they gave a bunch of key technology to under an agreement.
I don't find that behavior to be unreasonable at all.
Their behavior is not unreasonable, but it is only possible because a prolific developer was not concerned about nuances of copyright law while collaborating with multiple companies.
That kind of behavior does cost goodwill, and although you might not mind working for ZeniMax, SCO, Oracle, I think the original point stands, and a few people might mind.
I expect that Facebook is going to tell Oculus to suck it up, pay a settlement, and everyone will go home and move on with their lives.
Carmac worked on Oculus at id's office, during work hours, using id resources. Oculus promoted their product using id games. At every step, id (and hence ZeniMax) provided technical assistance.
Oculus didn't want to pay for it by reaching a deal as they moved forward to commercializing, so now they're going to reach one as part of a settlement resolving a lawsuit.
Really, this doesn't strike me as a particularly bad case, and reading their lawsuit filing, not inappropriate for them to file a lawsuit after failing to have a settlement reached with Oculus to pay for the technology.
(As an aside, there is other IP than just copyright involved.)
He also worked from home, on weekends, and from hotel, when he wants to be uninterrupted. Who knows if he billed (his own, historically) company for that? The point is, he really didn't have to, and ZeniMax is playing a 'gotcha' game.
>Really, this doesn't strike me as a particularly bad case, and reading their lawsuit filing, not inappropriate for them to file a lawsuit after failing to have a settlement reached with Oculus to pay for the technology.
I agree, they probably have a decent case, but it's not any less sad to see.
If I work for money developing a certain kind of technology, it's reasonable for my employer to think I won't give my work project over to another company and that they have some claim to that technology.
The thing is, we can't talk legalese and English at the same time. By law, ZeniMax might own everything and its history, if they own 51% of it. But by causality, they might have played no part in its creation. This is why they might have a legal case, (unless they did, in fact, instigated VR R&D, as opposed to just buy share of [id]) but they don't have my goodwill.
Not true. See my previous question and discussion on this topic at the link below. If you sign a contract with a large company which has a clause that they own ip you create while working for them belongs to them (which is very common), you are out of luck.
What we do as engineers, especially in software development, shouldn't be treated with the same reasoning as you'd seen in an assembly line.
First, note that Carmack was a cofounder of id; a good chunk of his precedent and history was doing exactly this sort of research work. Does Zenimax want to go back and claim ownership of his contributions to graphics cards manufacturers for his help with their drivers and APIs?
Second, note that at a high level, it simply doesn't make sense to have an engineer not working on R&D in fields outside of what the current core line of business is. Especially in a AAA studio, a lot of that work is either art or scripting or quashing bugs--a workload which is honestly a total waste of senior engineer talent. They enjoyed the fruits of this labor; consider the extra sales of Doom 3 BFG whose improvements were driven partially by this work with Oculus.
Third, Zenimax wasn't and isn't in the business of making hardware, and only now seemed to give a shit following the Facebook acquisition. This is so transparently a cash-grab that I'm kind of surprised you are being generous at all on this.
~
Look, I don't know about you, but I'd rather not live in a world where my employer effectively owns everything I do while drawing a salary there, and can make a claim on everything I work on hence, regardless of whether it makes any logical sense or not.
Further, I don't think it's good that you can spend twenty years building a business (industry, more honestly) and then have some asshole suits screw you out of what should by right be a fun working semi-retirement. It's like spitting in the face of engineering's American Dream.
Do you really think I should (for example) be allowed to develop a new plastic in an R&D position as part of my duties at a chemical company, and then simply give the research over to a competitor because it strikes my fancy?
If Carmack wanted to retain control over his IP, or not work under the (pretty reasonable) IP assignment clause, he should have not sold the company or not stayed working there.
The fact is ZeniMax has several good claims: Oculus used id IP to promote their product (games), used products of id's (under ZeniMax) research in to VR, and so on.
Which was (part of) the portfolio Zenimax was buying into when they acquired id. Zenimax spent about $105 million on that deal, of which Carmack presumably received a large chunk as a co-owner of the company. They put down fat money to own id and the IP that came out there.
Further, I don't think it's good that you can spend twenty years building a business (industry, more honestly) and then have some asshole suits screw you out of what should by right be a fun working semi-retirement. It's like spitting in the face of engineering's American Dream.
How are they screwing him? He could have just quit ID and gone to work on Oculus once he decided that that was the most exciting thing, it's not like he was depending on a biweekly paycheck from Zenimax to keep a roof over his head and put diapers on the baby. Nobody forced him to sell id to ZeniMax, I presume he and his partners did so because they all got very rich in the process.
Then you're a sellout, and an enemy of labor. Enjoy your pieces of silver.
Had the tech come from a line employee, maybe--but it came from somebody with a long history of helping others in the community, of developing technology as a default idle process, and who basically invented the field.
That you'd honor Zenimax's position here is very unfortunate, least of all because you'd be supporting the position that anything you do while employed belongs to your employer, especially after a precedent is set to the contrary.
I'm not shocked that Zenimax is suing, because they're a bunch of money-grubbing assholes and probably sad they missed out on the cash from the Facebook acquisition. That said, I don't pretend for a minute that what they're doing is anything other than that: being money-grubbing assholes.
So yes, I think projects you undertake at work for money belong to your employer, and that this is a reasonable standard.
> least of all because you'd be supporting the position that anything you do while employed belongs to your employer
My position is that work you do for hire belongs to the person paying, not anything to do with side projects.
> 25. In 2011, ZeniMax actively pursued that research, including experiments with various off-the-shelf headsets. However, none provided an experience sufficiently immersive and responsive to be commercially successful. A significant limitation was “latency” – the delay between a user’s movement and the corresponding change in the displayed image.
> 26. By 2012, ZeniMax employees, including Carmack, had amassed valuable and confidential know-how and trade secret information about how to develop, combine, and optimize hardware, firmware, and software for an improved and competitively advantageous virtual reality experience (the “VR Technology”).
> 27. ZeniMax planned to demonstrate its VR Technology at the E3 Convention in June 2012, using one of its leading brands, “DOOM 3: BFG Edition.” On or about March 7, 2012 – a month before ZeniMax obtained a prototype Rift or had any contact with Luckey – id Software’s Creative Director tested a virtual reality headset in ZeniMax’s offices using ZeniMax’s VR Technology, as shown in this photograph posted online by id Software at that time: [Photo Omitted in Quote]
(Pages 9-10 of lawsuit PDF)
As can be seen, ZeniMax was actively pursuing VR outside of Carmac's work with Oculus, and hence his work on the Oculus project would fall under rather reasonable IP assignments - see the inserted image of the contract clause from page 8 of the lawsuit.
> 45. Luckey used ZeniMax’s VR Technology that he acquired through the FTP site and otherwise to create and promote the modified Rift headset.
> 46. Around the same time, ZeniMax also sent cables and customized sensors to Luckey and disclosed – pursuant to the Non-Disclosure Agreement – additional hardware design improvements regarding optics calibration and sensor mounting.
I keep seeing Zenimax used (presumably) in place of Carmack--probably because their arrangement was more "let the father of desktop gaming graphics do whatever he wants", and it looks really good in this filing if it isn't him but Zenimax and Zenimax employees.
My issue with your excerpt of 26 is that how to "developm combine, and optimize hardware, firmware, and software...for virtual reality" is a completely broad description which can apply to any sort of 3D work whatsoever. It sounds impressive as hell, sure, but the fact is that tweaking a shader on Ogre3D would fall under that category. It's stupidly broad.
By conveniently switching around when they refer to what--in other words, by being lawyers--they manage to sound really damning when pretty much anything would fall under their claimed work.
Do you disagree with that analysis?
have you ever signed a software engineering contract? surrender of IP created at work or working for the company is _very_ standard.
http://www.zacks.com/commentary/32628/bull-of-the-day-electr... "The stock has been an all-star performer over the past two years, as EA has appreciated by nearly 150% in the time frame."
Gamers don't care.
First of all, most stocks have appreciated significantly, the stock market is at all time highs.
Second, EA sales do not correlate to the stock price increase, nor do profits (you can wait for the stock crash accordingly). Their PE ratio is basically between off the charts and negative. Their sales haven't increased in six years: they did $4 billion in sales in fiscal 2008, they did $3.8 billion in fiscal 2013.
Why is it up so much? Because investors are frequently irrational, sentiment tends to go to extremes.
[0]: http://www.scribd.com/doc/225491347/ZeniMax-v-Oculus-Complai...
How does that follow?
(Standard disclaimer: I know nothing of the merits of the case, the background, &c., ad naus., and thus speak not thereto. I'm just curious how parent sees the logic working here.)
If Carmack felt like developing VR outside of Zenimax offices, he obviously could have. So it must be true that Zenimax didn't actually help VR in any substantial way. Carmack's VR development just happened to take place within a Zenimax building.
He had a contractual exemption for Armadillo. His development 'just happened' to take place inside a Zenimax building, ie the workplace where he was employed. If you're on someone's payroll and working in their building, I think it's sort of reasonable for them to expect that you're working to advance their interests rather than your own.
Your new top talent goes on to create many millions of dollars of value for your company.
Or so you think, until you wake up one morning and discover that he's left for Facebook along with the high-profile new technology you thought you was going to bring you many millions of dollars in game revenue.
Sorry, but it sounds like since you hero-worship John Carmack he shouldn't be required to abide by any sort of contractual agreements he signs up to, which strikes me as a bit immature.
It may be that Carmack was used to there not really being a major distinction between what he owned and what id owned, and got caught off-guard by ZeniMax's insistence that this was a ZeniMax-only kind of thing now.
ZeniMax has the rights to an awfully big stable of awfully important gaming properties. I think a lot of people - even people who don't like anything about this nasty little scrap - will be willing to hold their noses.
57. On July 26, 2012, Luckey again asked for
ZeniMax’s help with the Kickstarter video,
specifically asking Carmack to provide a clip
“talking about the Rift/VR in general/whatever
else you think would be a great thing to have.”
Luckey further acknowledged: “Your reputation has
really helped the credibility of this project, and
having that credibility in the video would make a
big difference for alot [sic] of people.” Carmack
declined Luckey’s request to appear in the
Kickstarter video.
58. At about that same time, Carmack advised
Luckey: “It is very important that you NOT use
anything that could be construed as Zenimax
property in the promotion of your product. Showing
my R&D testbed with the Rage media would be bad,
for instance.”
59. Luckey replied, “I will make
sure we do not show the Rage demo in the
Kickstarter, but is there any chance we can
mention support/show a quick clip from Doom 3/BFG
Edition?” ZeniMax turned down Luckey’s request,
instructing that Luckey rely on publicly-available
information for Kickstarter promotional material.
60. On August 1, 2012, Luckey launched the Oculus
Kickstarter campaign. The funding target was set
at $250,000. The Kickstarter page featured a
five-minute video describing the modified Rift
headset.
61. In blatant disregard of ZeniMax’s rights,
Defendants used ZeniMax’s intellectual property in
the Kickstarter video. The video features multiple
clips showing “DOOM 3: BFG Edition,” displayed on
the modified Rift headset. The video also used
“DOOM 3: BFG Edition” to promote the modified Rift
by displaying, without authorization, ZeniMax’s
logo for “DOOM 3: BFG Edition” as the first
Oculus-Rift ready game. Further, despite the lack
of any commercial agreement with ZeniMax,
Defendants promised that certain backers of the
Kickstarter campaign would receive copies of
ZeniMax’s game “DOOM 3: BFG Edition” with support
for the modified Rift.
Could be ugly.
ZeniMax knows that Oculus holds the stronger public opinion, for two reasons: (1) people love Oculus, and (2) Minecraft fans are still stinging from ZeniMax's trademark claims against Mojang re: Scrolls. Very good play on ZeniMax's part, dropping a release and an extremely well-written complaint at once. They want to control the narrative.
But directly using ZeniMax properties to promote the thing while working under a cloud of IP ownership uncertainty was probably not a great move.
Or is it supposed to show how fast-and-loose Oculus was with other people's stuff?
Edit At least reading through the rest, and taking ZeniMax at their word, it looks like ZeniMax has a credible claim that it's their software that got the Rift working. But if true, it feels like there should be some discrete evidence of that by looking at what's running on the Rift.
Naturally a complaint will be written to portray the defendant in as unfavorable a light as possible. As with federal indictments, I wouldn't want to see people form their opinions of a company based on the content of a one-sided complaint against them (not a lawyer, not legal advice).
I was fairly vocally opposed to the Facebook acquisition of Oculus, but still, let's wait for the Oculus response and subsequent settlement or trial.
However, it was not my intention to misconstrue your comment, and if you feel that I have done so, I apologize.
Just idly wondering...
If I created a fancy gaming mouse and wrote some software integration with a popular gaming series at the time, could I not offer that as a reward tier for a Kickstarter? I would think as long as I can get resellable boxed copies I could throw it in?
For example, if you create a gaming mouse, buy ten retail copies of the new Doom 7 right off the retail shelves and offer them for promotional purposes at no cost along with your mouse, the publisher (or sometimes game creator) can ask you to cease and desist. The lawsuit, were one to occur, might argue that you're causing misrepresentation (have to be careful not to make it look like your gaming mouse is being endorsed by the game creator or publisher etc), or claim that you're damaging their game's brand through commercial association they didn't approve of, and they could also go the route of claiming you're commercially benefiting from association with their game / brand and seek monetary compensation.
Way back when, circa mid to late 1990's I ran into these types of problems in the gaming industry with a company I operated. The gaming world was a lot more legally benign back then and it was still a serious problem. Back then you could often easily get permission from the company to do a promotion, but you properly would check in with their PR / marketing group and get formal approval. id Software was often decent about these types of things. They did a zillion community promotions of all sorts.
There's nothing illegal about giving out free copies of something that you bought off the shelf, whether or not you have the vendor's authorization to do that. They could claim some type of fraudulent misrepresentation, but I'd think the violations would have to be flagrant and egregious for something like that to fly.
Like so many other (game) programmers, Carmack is a hero of mine, and the bias runs deep. In reading the complaint, though, I was starting to feel for Zenimax, but when the "$500 worth of optics" phrase started appearing, they lost me. The kit, as described in the thread where Carmack and Palmer first interacted in public, was to be a display, display-controller, and some sort of ski-goggle based contraption you could put together. And, iirc, $300 was the price discussed.
But I think the really key point, missing from this complaint, is that, before Carmack (and Abrash at Valve) improved on the Rift, it had stirred up interest because of the concept of using simple, _cheap_, optics, that would allow the display to be closer to the eyes (wide FOV), and pre-correcting for the resulting distortion in software.
Carmack and Abrash provided some secret sauce that I'm sure will be vital to the sense of presence that will drive broad appeal, but the breakthrough was saying "so what if the optics massively distort the image; we'll fix it in software". From what I've read, I'm pretty sure that wasn't Palmer's idea to begin with either, but he was the first one to run with it.
Even though Oculus was not responding (initially) to those requests, Zenimax STILL continued providing code to run on the Rift. It almost looks like Zenimax was trying to get to a point where they could sue Oculus.
The complaint then clearly describes Oculus's proposal (2% equity, subject to dilution, etc) and conveniently glosses over Zenimax's "larger share of equity" counter offer (which Oculus seemingly found far fetched).
And then the turning point; when Zenimax instructed Carmack to stop providing code for the Rift to Oculus, Carmack resigns and joins Oculus (eventually with 5 other "key" VR employees of Zenimax).
I can definitely see how this looks bad for Oculus. They will probably get slapped for the unauthorized IP usage for the DOOM videos, logos per their NDA. But for actual code? Who knows..
The Rift most likely does not run any of Zenimax's code at this point since Carmack must have rewritten it from scratch. But Carmack would obviously remember what and how he wrote the Rift's software; would that count as still infringing upon Zenimax's IP?
So it makes their behaviour look a bit contradictory: one part of Zenimax is asking for (or hinting at) compensation, and another part is setting up FTP sites to transfer code, supplying technical advice and more. And this is happening simultaneously.
But really, that second part is just Carmack being friendly with Luckey, who is at this point some kid in his garage with cool VR tech.
Carmack didn't really resign — his employment contract was up in June 2013. I'm guessing he had a lot of free reign at Zenimax and was likely bored. VR gave him something to be passionate about again, and he just had to wait out his contract before he could go all-in.
the key technology Luckey used to establish Oculus was developed by Zenimax
Looks like a negotiating strategy by Zenimax... and since Oculus lacks deep pockets, which pressure could be effective. That is, absent the counter-pressure of public opinion...
[1] http://projects.ict.usc.edu/mxr/diy/fov2go-viewer/ [2] http://blog.kenperlin.com/?p=14708
[1] http://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/assets/4490157/1-main.pdf
[2] http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/21/5739086/oculus-vr-and-its-...
Edit: Clarified "this lawsuit" and "side effects in any competitors".
The whole piece reads as if ZeniMax felt that it has somehow acquired possession of Carmack's knowledge (or any other of its employees), which at least for me seems to be totally absurd.
Carmack obviously re-wrote all code once leaving Zenimax, but there's a case to be made that Zenimax giving Carmack free reign to work on Oculus while at Zenimax significantly benefited Oculus.
Oculus agreed at some point — offering Zenimax a 2% stake. Zenimax asked for more (amount not specified in the complaint). Oculus response was that the "figure was so far out of the ballpark, we believe there is little hope" — negotiations broke down there.
> An individual case often begins with a perfunctory infringement complaint,[31] or even a mere threat of suit, which is often enough to encourage settlement for the nuisance or "threat value" of the suit by purchasing a license to the patent. In the United States, suits are often brought in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, known for favoring plaintiffs and for expertise in patent suits.[53]
Oculus opened a branch office there (surprise!), probably for Carmack.
For what its worth, these sorts of lawsuits come out of the woodwork when ever a 'liquidity event' happens. From folks suing companies about to go public, to targets of large acquisitions. Always interesting to read what they have to say when they try the 'appeal to the public' angle.
Of course they launched another AAA game this week and I can't say with this news i'm particularly interested in supporting Zenimax financially in their lawsuit.