Oculus Rift Development Kit 1 | Hacker News Reader

Oculus Rift Development Kit 1

github.com

124 pointswildpeaks26 comments

PATENTS

Additional Grant of Patent Rights

“Software” means the Rift DK1 Firmware distributed by Oculus VR, Inc. Oculus hereby grants you a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, irrevocable (subject to the termination provision below) license under any rights in any patent claims owned by Oculus, to make, have made, use, sell, offer to sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Software. For avoidance of doubt, no license is granted under Oculus’s rights in any patent claims that are infringed by (i) modifications to the Software made by you or a third party, or (ii) the Software in combination with any software or other technology provided by you or a third party.

The license granted hereunder will terminate, automatically and without notice, for anyone that makes any claim (including by filing any lawsuit, assertion or other action) alleging (a) direct, indirect, or contributory infringement or inducement to infringe any patent: (i) by Oculus or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates, whether or not such claim is related to the Software, (ii) by any party if such claim arises in whole or in part from any software, product or service of Oculus or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates, whether or not such claim is related to the Software, or (iii) by any party relating to the Software; or (b) that any right in any patent claim of Oculus is invalid or unenforceable.

This seems - and I'm not a lawyer and could be totally misreading it - to be a really raw deal, in the sense that in exchange for using the software you're agreeing to not just sue, but even assert in any way that Facebook infringes upon any patent of yours (or anyone else's, for that matter).

Does "any patent" include design patents? Because that seems like a really terrible thing to agree to. Say I'm a company looking to use this library: do I really want to be bound by a license which will be revoked if I ever sue, or even claim publicly that any division of Facebook - because that's what I take "affiliate" to mean - has infringed upon any patent, be it hardware, software, design...

Or am I just misreading this?

IANAL either, but as I read it, if you sue facebook the patent license just goes away. It's essentially the same at that point as if they hadn't mentioned anything at all. So you're either getting something (a conditional license for the patents) at no direct cost to you, or you're getting nothing and losing nothing - how is that a raw deal?

These patent grants are commonly used by companies who gather patent portfolios as a means of patent mutually assured destruction. The goal is to ensure that they will never be sued for patent infringement by making sure they have a broad enough patent portfolio to always be able to countersue.

Now, if you want to use this and retain the ability to safely sue facebook, you could always negotiate a separate, irrevocable patent license. This is what you would need to do (that, or ignore any potential patents and hope you're not sued) in the absence of such a grant in the first place.

Well according to the language, if you simply wrote a tweet saying that "Facebook patent US7827208, 'generating a feed of stories personalized for members of a social network' is riduculous and overbroad" you could then have your right to develop for Oculus effectively revoked

http://www.google.com/patents/US7827208

I see how you're getting that, but I don't think the license is intended that way or would be enforced that way. When they say "makes a claim," they mean "makes a claim to an entity with the power to grant the claim and invalidate the patent," not "makes a claim on Twitter."

As context, patent litigation comes up in one of two ways: either a patent holder alleges that their patent is being violated, or a non-patent-holder alleges that a patent is invalid. The (a) and (b) in this license seem to be meant to cover those two situations.

You could say it's a raw deal if you think patents should exist. If like me, you don't, then you could say it doesn't go nearly far enough, and should instead terminate all rights to both the patents and the copyrighted work if you attempt to assert any patent against anyone, anywhere.

I recall the apache license having a similar clause to reduce patent litigation against them as well.

I wonder if other product and consumer good manufacturers could get away with this too? (Not just software.) "By agreeing to purchase this car at our fabulous discounted price you agree to never sue GM for anything for any other GM owned or licensed technology."

The second part is just gibberish to me. Someone please translate.

"If you write software using this API that infringes patents, we ain't liable for that crap. It's all you, baby. Have fun."

"...And if you should ever claim that anything we make infringes on any patent that you might have, you can't use our API anymore, like ever."

If that is legal, everyone should add it to their licenses immediately.

Kudos to Oculus for this.

The firmware is 2-clause BSD with an additional patent grant.

What are Altium and Gerbers? https://github.com/OculusVR/RiftDK1/tree/master/Schematics

Altium: Schematic and printed circuit board design files for Altium brand software.

Gerber: Standard format output files understood by printed circuit board manufacturing companies. These are output by Altium and every other printed circuit board design program. Can also be viewed in a Gerber file viewer.

Check out the committer, nrpatel (eclecti.cc). Awesome projects.

It's been a while since being impressed by CompE folks like this in college (I'm a software guy).

Just released a few minutes ago at Oculus Connect :)

I'm surprised at how there are only 3 major components in the schematic: a STM-32 microcontroller, an accelerometer/gyroscope, and a magnetometer. Of course, it gets the job done as simply as possible so nothing more is needed. Does anyone know if a user needs to go through a calibration step (say be moving in a circle) before using it?

Yup, the Oculus Config Util, which owners of DK1 can download, includes a calibration function. You hold the Oculus DK1 in place and rotate it around in every which way until the software is happy.

good to know -- thanks!

Now only if they could release their libOVR library for talking to the Oculus under a free software compatible license.

I imagine they will so they can dominate the industry as a "standard" leveraging themselves above/against competitors. It would ensure they stay the lead in the emerging VR-industry.

Thanks for reminding me just how much I hate Facebook buying Oculus Rift. The last thing we need is for Facebook to become unremovable from yet another industry.

Great to see the acquisition hasn't changed the founders promise to be opensource. Bravo!

Looking at the files it's a pretty well designed piece of hardware but nothing too technical. The magic (as usual) is in the software.

The design is pretty good too. They even included the carrying case, though, it's missing a clip, ha.

Check out https://github.com/highfidelity/hifi These ideas go together.

Don't forget: Carmack and Abrash are going to give talks today!

http://www.twitch.tv/oculus

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