Hacker News Reader

I would.

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.

Let's be frank, there are at at least 3 degrees of separation between what Oculus 'got' and ZeniMax. It was completely based on John Carmacs enthusiasm for VR, and the time that he invested in getting Doom3 to work with it, among his other experiments, that there is any relationship between Oculus and ZeniMax. He also pushed for Doom3 to be open sourced, and many other things. ZeniMax can not control him, but unfortunately they do control a company that Carmac also had enthusiasm for, and all the IP John Carmac created when ZeniMax wasn't even around.

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.

> 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.

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.)

>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.

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.

See my other reply for page cites and details, but it seems that ZeniMax was actively pursuing VR technology and that Carmac was part of that project prior to his work on Oculus.

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.

Well, this is the first I hear of ZeniMax actively pursuing VR. I'm curious to know what you're basing this on. From what John Carmac said, he has personally been interested in VR since 90s, not ZeniMax.

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.

> 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.

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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7589822

You are indeed out of luck if you sign such a contract, which is why it's so important to refuse to sign any such contract. If you're hard up for money (been there), it might seem crazy to risk not getting a job by complaining about the contract you're about to sign, but trust me, the employers are usually more than happy to carve out a clause for you. They want you working for them more than they want to assert dominance over you.

So, there's a whole host of problems with this line of reasoning.

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.

ZeniMax was working on VR technologies before Carmack began interacting with Oculus, and has a reasonable claim to the fruits of his work on that (being that it was an assigned R&D project).

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.

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.

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.

"I would."

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.

According to the lawsuit filing (page 8 of the PDF linked above), Carmac was researching VR at id under ZeniMax.

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.

So, your examples show an issue that recurs elsewhere in that document:

> 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.

The point of my quotation is merely to show that as part of work activities, research on VR was being done at id (ZeniMax) prior to contact with Oculus, and that Carmack's work on the subject would thus fall under the IP assignment clause from page 8.

Do you disagree with that analysis?

> anything you do while employed belongs to your employer

have you ever signed a software engineering contract? surrender of IP created at work or working for the company is _very_ standard.

The same people who won't buy EA games. Oh -

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.

I agree that gamers mostly don't care, but referencing the stock doesn't support your argument.

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.

Remind me not to sign any contracts with you, because you're just too cool for that sort of thing.

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.

While I haven't read the complaint and am not informed on the specifics of this case, I agree that under the parent commenter's logic, there'd be no commercial benefit to paying for R&D. If you're going to pump the cash into R&D, you have to be able to net something from it. R&D-type guys are going to have many varied interests, and it's certainly advisable that they create a hard, impermeable separation between things that they want their employer to be able to claim, and things they don't (i.e., don't even think about projects that you don't want your employer to claim while you're on their clock, in their building, or using their mail servers).

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.

Why assume when you can read plaintiff's description of events in the suit[0], which directly challenges your assumptions and contains some extremely damning evidence?

[0]: http://www.scribd.com/doc/225491347/ZeniMax-v-Oculus-Complai...

> 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.

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.)

What about Apple? Are they hurting? Why should it be different for a company like Zenimax than it is for Apple?

Who would want to work for Zenimax after this?

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.

I'm sure they'll be able to comfort themselves with the million of dollars they're going to get.