
John Carmack's former employer claims he stole tech for Oculus VR when he left - pytrin
http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/01/zenimax-claims-oculus-stole/
======
chollida1
> In August 2012, ZeniMax began seeking compensation for the intellectual
> property, according to people familiar with the discussions. Negotiations
> continued on and off for nearly six months, with Oculus eventually offering
> ZeniMax a small equity stake, but no deal was reached, the people said. This
> past summer, Mr. Carmack joined Oculus, and earlier this year, five ZeniMax
> employees joined Oculus, the people said. In February, ZeniMax asked Mr.
> Carmack to disclose all of the virtual-reality inventions he developed while
> working at ZeniMax, one of the people said.

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](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.

------
pachydermic
Ugh, Zenimax legal is the worst. I mean, maybe they have a claim - Carmack was
probably working on Oculus stuff while employed there - but I find the idea
that businessmen own everything a programmer works on just because he's an
employee abhorrent.

Remember the whole Scrolls debacle?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrolls_%28video_game%29#Bethes...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrolls_%28video_game%29#Bethesda_lawsuit)
Apparently that was Bethesda Softworks, not Zenimax... but I wonder who was
really behind it.

~~~
kayoone
If a programmer is compensated for his time working for a company i think the
company has a right to claim the work produced during that time. If they
pursue it, is a different question, but i think Zenimax has a valid argument
here.

~~~
enraged_camel
Your salary covers the work you produce while you are at work. If you pursue
unrelated side projects in your spare time, I don't see how anyone with half a
brain can reasonably claim that they also own those projects (partially or
wholly).

~~~
loup-vaillant
I hear some US company make you sign off your right to write anything on your
own. Meaning, you agree that _any_ code you write belongs to them by default.
Sometimes, this is even a problem for Open Source contributions.

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.

------
NDizzle
Smart people should stop leveraging the amount of information in their brain.
That's the property of some corporation! What was he thinking?!

~~~
daenz
It sounds like he actually wrote software, but yes, this line seriously bugs
me:

> The proprietary ... know-how Mr. Carmack developed when he was a ZeniMax
> employee ... are owned by ZeniMax.

~~~
homulilly
Why the hell would Zenimax have legal ownership to stuff he did during his
time off?

~~~
justin66
Why would you assume Carmack did everything he gave to Zenimax in his time
off?

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".

------
clavalle
>The proprietary technology and know-how Mr. Carmack developed when he was a
ZeniMax employee, and used by Oculus, are owned by ZeniMax.

John Carmack's 'know-how' is owned by ZeniMax? Absurd.

~~~
ceejayoz
"Trade secrets" might be a better term there.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
It's not a trade secrets case. Zenimax wasn't in the same business. Zenimax
are claiming that they own everything he did while employed, thus, Oculus IP
is zenimax IP. Typical tech company lawyer BS.

~~~
couradical
This is why you sign an exclusion clause when you start anywhere. I don't know
why this is so crazy. Salaried employees are paid regardless of hours worked,
which means that you are technically always employed, regardless if you're
expected to be working.

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.

~~~
justizin
"Salaried employees are paid regardless of hours worked, which means that you
are technically always employed, regardless if you're expected to be working."

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.

~~~
Consultant32452
I've had employers make me sign contracts that strictly forbade moonlighting
and anything I developed while employed there belonged to them. I no longer
work there, and don't sign agreements like that anymore, but they exist and
aren't terribly uncommon.

~~~
lmm
Companies put a lot of terms in their contracts, not all of which are legally
enforceable. Check your rights as well as your contract.

------
ensmotko
Carmack's response: "No work I have ever done has been patented. Zenimax owns
the code that I wrote, but they don't own VR." [0]

[0]
[https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/461918500307472384](https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/461918500307472384)

~~~
kevingadd
Unless part of his agreements with Zenimax required him to provide all
necessary assistance and documentation so that they can patent his work, which
many agreements do...

~~~
jamesaguilar
Also, they may own it as a trade secret rather than as a patented process. Or,
further, it's possible that code that John is working on now is a derivative
work of code owned by Zenimax. We won't know until the facts come out.

------
cromwellian
This is what happens when you sell your company to lawyers (CEO/founder of
Zenimax)

------
NoPiece
When you are acquired for $2 billion, know that there will be hundreds of
lawyers looking to find a way to sue you and get some of that Facebook stock.

~~~
xcolour
I think it's worth pointing out that ZeniMax has been pursuing this since
2012, long before the Facebook acquisition. At least according to this article
on ArsTechnica:

[http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/05/id-software-parent-
sta...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/05/id-software-parent-stakes-claim-
on-carmacks-oculus-rift-technology/)

~~~
NoPiece
it might be true that they were pursuing it earlier, however, according to the
WSJ article that is the source for all this, the lawyers didn't get involved
until after the Facebook announcement.

 _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...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303948104579534013624548846?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303948104579534013624548846.html)

------
wdewind
> To be completely clear, Zenimax is claiming that John Carmack took software
> with him to Oculus VR that he developed while still an employee at id
> Software (owned by Zenimax).

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.

~~~
clavalle
I find it hard to imagine that an industry veteran like Carmack would write
code for another company while employed with another and proving some bit of
proprietary advice was incorporated into the product would be difficult.

My guess is that Zenimax wants to get access to the source to go on a fishing
expedition.

~~~
taiki
Not unprecedented though. Carmack did once advise Ken Silverman on using
sectors with his 3D engine. Which later became the Build Engine.

~~~
z3phyr
Correct me, Build engine is 2.5D. Isn't it?

~~~
taiki
The exact nature of various FPS gaming engines from that era kind of gives me
a massive headache.

Still, the point stands that this isn't unprecedented. John Carmack's has, in
the past, just helped out potential competitors before.

------
aw3c2
Actual source is
[http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230394810...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303948104579534013624548846)
which sadly is behind a paywall. So here is a Google Cache
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303948104579534013624548846)
or as more permanent archive
[http://archive.today/fz5Ge](http://archive.today/fz5Ge)

------
rageear
I guess this means that ZeniMax owns all the code that Carmack wrote for
Armadillo Aerospace, too.

Oh right, AA isn't worth $2B.

------
Dirlewanger
Hmm...sounds quite hairy, and quite likely that Carmack did, to some extent,
leverage existing proprietary id software to assist in developing Rift's SDK
or whatever before he left. I mean, who wouldn't? But at the same time, you'd
think someone like Carmack would be aware of the murkiness of using company IP
to make something...and then taking that something to another company.

~~~
homulilly
This looks more like typical tech lawyer company bullshit where they claim
that to basically own your brain while you're employed including anything you
did during your time off.

------
drawkbox
A gaming giant going against a gaming legend, not sure if Zenimax thought this
one through. Also doesn't Carmack still own a portion of id software and thus
Zenimax? Carmack tried to get them to pursue VR but they didn't want to.
Sounds like a bratty response to a bad decision.

~~~
gnoway
Zenimax owns id, not the other way around.

------
snorkel
For those who bemoaned the Facebook acquisition, now you can be reassured that
papa Facebook has deep enough pockets to make the patent troll go away.

------
callesgg
Do they/companies in general have no notion of how bad stuff like this makes
them look.

Either they should fire the people handling PR or talk to them before doing
dumb shit.

~~~
robotresearcher
They just can't resist the pile of money that Facebook paid for Oculus.
Getting a slice of that might be more profitable than writing new software,
unfortunately. Goodwill be damned.

------
madrox
Honestly, the details in something like this don't matter. ZeniMax is betting
on Oculus not wanting a spurious legal claim holding up the closing of the
Facebook deal. Oculus leaders don't really care, because they just want their
big payday. Oculus will settle, ZeniMax will get some money, and we'll all
move on.

------
chazu
This reminds me of _Count Zero_. The whole plot about a scientist leaving one
corporate nation-state to work for another, and having to be extracted by a
team of commandos so his old bosses don't kill him.

------
nemof
so here's the agreement Oculus allegedly broke:
[http://recode.net/2014/05/01/heres-the-agreement-oculus-
alle...](http://recode.net/2014/05/01/heres-the-agreement-oculus-allegedly-
broke-according-to-zenimax/)

------
mcv
I can certainly understand why Carmack left. Doesn't sound like his kind of
company.

------
grayclhn
Teenager me would have had no way to process this. Adult me's struggling too.

