Jury hands victory to Facebook and Oculus VR founder in Rift ownership trial

https://lawstreetmedia.com/news/tech/jury-hands-victory-to-facebook-and-oculus-vr-founder-in-rift-ownership-trial/

by telotortium • 5 years ago

333 115 5 years ago

aresant2• 5 years ago

The story of Palmer / Oculus / etc is full of massive RIFTS between partners and parties

I hadn't even heard about the TFT chapter but the more broadly reported one was the saga with Carmack / Palmer / Zenimax eg ->

- Zenimax bought ID software for >$100m(1) on June 24, 2009.

- Carmack signed up with Zenimax for an earn-out / golden-handcuffs agreement that ended in June of 2013.

- Carmack was enthralled with VR.

- Carmack found Palmer via an internet forum, reached out to get a rift to try.

- Carmack tinkered with the Rift, adding sensors, building calibration, etc. while on the clock / using hardware from zenimax.

- Carmack brought a prototype of the Rift working on Doom 3 to E3 with him providing Oculus with their early press.

- Zenimax realized the extent to which Carmack was enabling Oculus and worked to negotiate equity with Brendan Iribe.

- Oculus sent Zenimax a proposal to discuss a partnership Sept 21, 2012 but never followed up / followed through.

- Carmack quit Zenimax the day his contract was up in June 2013, joined Oculus as CTO a few months later and took his 5 best guys with him.

- FB bought Oculus March 2014, Zenmix got pissed and sued.

From my memory of the early rift I am positive that outside of Palmer it was Carmack's genius that made this viable and Carmack's video lent credibility to the campaign.

No major comment here just a wild history, not unusual for breakthrough & derivative technology!

(1) https://www.scribd.com/document/274211118/Judge-denies-Faceb...

(2) http://www.gamespot.com/articles/zenimax-raised-105-million-...

RealityVoid• 5 years ago

Honestly, Zenimax sound like really unpleasant to work for

BoysenberryPi• 5 years ago

Everything I know about Zenimax leads me to believe they are the absolute worst.

MikusR• 5 years ago

Zenimax was owned and operated entirely by m̶i̶c̶e̶, i mean lawyers.

amelius• 5 years ago

Name sounds like some prescription drug.

xenihn• 5 years ago

Great writeup, I didn't know Carmack was involved to this extant.

My opinion on this, completely irrespective of the actual terms and laws:

Zenimax doesn't deserve anything.

But anyone who funded the original Kickstarter does (I was not one of those people). Anyone who put $200+ into that Kickstarter deserved some sort of payout. I feel like, at the very least, they should get free Oculus headsets for life.

It's hard to put a number on the total value created by that initial Kickstarter funding if it had been treated as an actual investment, but I'd be willing to bet that it's already in the billions, and will only grow.

GauntletWizard• 5 years ago

I mean, I got both the Dev Kit promised to me and they sent me a free production Oculus Rift when it launched, so I don't feel too cheated - But still disappointed by the Facebook sellout.

aresant2• 5 years ago

With you on this. Someday maybe a collaborative DAO or similar model replaces Kickstarter if the SEC can sort their heads out and makes this a reality.

kbenson2• 5 years ago

I feel like, at the very least, they should get free Oculus headsets for life.

Is there something different about this kickstarter than most others? Did they offer ownership? Because it sounds like you think you bought something they don't think they sold.

Just because you compliment my son on his lemonade stand and tell him you believe in him and buy a lemonade doesn't entitle you to a share of his eventual billion dollar lemonade empire.

wccrawford• 5 years ago

I was one of those backers.

We got the headset that we paid for, and we also got the next dev headset after that for free. I definitely feel like I got my money's worth from it.

I then switched for a Vive for my first retail headset, but I've since switched to Quest 2. Even though it shouldn't be better, the wireless functionality and ability to play games without a computer make it better than the original Vive. I'll likely be upgrading to whatever is next in the Oculus lineup.

I backed VR because I've always loved the idea of VR and AR, and desperately wanted it to take off. Palmer and Carmack did a great job of making that happen, and even though I don't like Palmer's politics, I'm very thankful that he got this ball rolling. If I had only gotten that first headset, I'd still feel like I totally got my money's worth. But the continued and increased presence of VR is the real payout for me.

My wife also has a Quest 2 now and we often play multiplayer games together, like Walkabout Minigolf. It's just amazing.

modeless7• 5 years ago

Anyone who put $200+ into that Kickstarter deserved some sort of payout

I agree but you'll have to blame the SEC for that. I'm sure Oculus and Kickstarter would have loved to sell equity to the public, and if they did then every backer would have made thousands of dollars on the deal. But the SEC's rules didn't allow equity crowdfunding at the time and they still impose limits that make it basically infeasible.

neartheplain• 5 years ago

I also funded the Kickstarter and received a DK1 (and DK2). I believe I was fairly compensated, and that demanding some unspecified extra payout would be excessive. If you want stock, buy stock, and deal with the added risk that true investment entails.

pavlov• 5 years ago

Would be awesome if every Apple product I ever purchased had been treated as an investment.

The 2000 dual-CPU Power Mac G4 would be worth a million now.

paxys• 5 years ago

Every Kickstarter backer got exactly what they were promised (ranging from tshirts to dev kits, studio visits and more), and a bonus production headset on top, so I'm not sure where the question of deserving more comes from.

ericmcer• 5 years ago

It sucks that there are just flocks of vultures waiting to profit off anything that results from his work. Business!

dylan6044• 5 years ago

Well, you are kind of a dolt for doing side work on company time with company equipment and expecting anything other than the company expecting ownership/equity of the results.

LegitShady8• 5 years ago

Add to this that most of CV1 architecture was lifted directly from the Valve Steam Sight headset - not sure how much of that went into rift. The valve employees who argued that valve should give the technology to Palmer without license (before any whispers of facebook acquisition) then jumped ship to facebook's oculus. Shady as fuck.

See details in this comment here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28871907

Oculus is a company that started shady and just gets shadier. They have a cheap good product but I won't support them. That doesn't even get into purchasing third party exclusives during their launch to keep them away from the competition, something that wasn't really a thing on PC at that point.

jimrandomh3• 5 years ago

If this were true, there would be a lot more similarity between the CV1 and the Vive. From my medium-depth technical understanding, they seem about as dissimilar as it's possible to be while still both being PC-connected VR headsets and both being compatible with the same third party Unity/UnrealEngine games.

leoc2• 5 years ago

And this possibly wasn't the beginning of tensions at ID/Zenimax about Carmack splitting his time with outside or non-core activities. Before VR there was Armadillo Aerospace and his pre-iPhone interest in mobile games. Carmack claimed that he tried to maintain some level of involvement with ID after quitting as a full-time(ish) employee, but that this was refused. Beyond even that, the spat may have been partly a continuation of ID office-political strife that stretched back to the Quake (1) era.

Then there's a whole other tangled story involving Michael Abrash and his comitatus at Valve, Palmer and the original Oculus guys, Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, other teams at Valve that also got excited about VR or AR at different stages, and Valve's office politics and internal decision-making.

EDIT: watered down some adverbs.

83457• 5 years ago

I consider the videos of Carmack demoing the rift duct tape edition with Doom 3 as the start of modern VR.

Arrath• 5 years ago

I had no idea (the modern iteration) went back that far, to be honest. Interesting stuff.

taneq3• 5 years ago

From my memory of the early rift I am positive that outside of Palmer it was Carmack's genius that made this viable and Carmack's video lent credibility to the campaign.

I'm positive of this. Palmer spotted an opportunity to use phone screens + MEMS sensors for cheap VR and garnered public support for his prototype by presenting it as an open source gadget.

Carmack thought it was cool, and brought his name, time, resources, business acumen and legendary development skills, got it running Doom 3. Next thing you know they have a million dollar Kickstarter and are pulling in massive rounds of funding.

ineedasername3• 5 years ago

Seems like both were necessary. Palmer had an idea and made a prototype, Carmack came in and helped spearhead the execution into a business.

Isn't that a fairly standard way that startups get started?

cma• 5 years ago

Carmack was already doing the MEMS sensor stuff a bit before, attaching it to a Sony HMZ and using gyro code from his rocket company.

badsectoracula• 5 years ago

The thing that always had me shaking my head in that saga is that Carmack tried to get Zenimax work on VR but Zenimax had no interest before Facebook entered the picture.

vkou• 5 years ago

Investors care very deeply about social proof. And there's no better social proof than another big investor putting money into an idea.

at-fates-hands• 5 years ago

Not only did they not have any interest, they didn't seem to balk when Carmack left ASAP when his contract was up and joined Oculus.

The fact they sued once they found out FB was involved, just makes it seem like they suddenly realized what Carmack was working on and could've delivered for them, and now that big money was involved, they panicked and had to slow the company down somehow.

I'd love to know what the actual timeframe is from the time Carmack left to the time Zenimax sued. It just seems so suspect the timetable and reeks of desperation of a company who discovered too late what they had all along and let go for nothing.

johnisgood• 5 years ago

So, where is Carmack now?

ErneX• 5 years ago

He's working on artificial general intelligence. But still does consulting for FB.

modeless7• 5 years ago

If people are wondering why this dry legal summary from two weeks ago is at the top of HN, it's probably because John Carmack just tweeted about how there's been a media blackout since their win: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1452758104735723526

According to Palmer Luckey there were tech reporters in the courtroom as the verdict was read, but they chose not to publish articles about it, presumably because something bad happening to Luckey/Oculus/Facebook would have been news, but something good doesn't fit the narrative. https://twitter.com/PalmerLuckey/status/1452753156895506433

rdw2• 5 years ago

Or maybe the reason is that it's not interesting. "Meritless lawsuit against huge company fails, status quo remains the same" stories play out every day. I'm sure it was a big deal for the participants, as most trials are, but, for anyone outside, its resolution is super boring.

slownews45• 5 years ago

I guess my question - given this lawsuit is so "boring" why do places like forbes go big into covering it early (facebook evil) but then when it is exposed as a sham, don't cover that outcome.

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/ex-facebook-vr-founder-...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joeparlock/2020/06/16/lawsuit-a...

They literally have tech journalists in courtroom for the outcome. But if it's not anti-facebook no coverage.

It is a bit weird.

nsxwolf• 5 years ago

Why did they cover it at the beginning then?

dntrkv2• 5 years ago

The problem is the one-sided coverage.

There was coverage of the lawsuit filed against FB & Co. They got the bad press. Then once the lawsuit was ruled in their favor, there was no coverage. Whereas, if they lost, you bet there would be coverage.

jcranmer2• 5 years ago

In support of this comment, compare the dockets on courtlistener in this case (https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4181898/total-recall-te...) versus, say, Epic v Apple (https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/17442392/epic-games-inc...) or Google v Uber (https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4609586/waymo-llc-v-ube...).

What jumps out at me is how little is available via RECAP on this case. The amended complaints, for example, aren't available--and that's literally the most important of the lawsuit! In the more interesting cases, far more of the docket is available, and often even some of the uninteresting minutiae of the docket (e.g., applications for pro hac vice) are sometimes available, presumably because someone unfamiliar with how the courts work wonders why this isn't available, buys it themself only to discover that it actually was uninteresting.

modeless7• 5 years ago

If reporters were in the courtroom to cover it, that means they thought that it would have been interesting, but only if Luckey had lost. This is fine if you see news as only entertainment. But if you expect news to be informative, then this kind of publication bias is presenting to you a warped version of the world and pretending that it's the truth.

See also how everyone believes crime is getting worse due to increasing news coverage, when the statistics say crime is decreasing.

comex• 5 years ago

I just searched a number of sites for "palmer lucky total recall". Many of the ones I checked (tech: The Verge, Gizmodo, cnet; mainstream: NY Times, Washington Post) never published any articles about this lawsuit.

IGN published one article when the lawsuit was first filed, and Destructoid published a copycat article. I'm not surprised the result was not interesting enough to write out, if they were even aware.

TechCrunch published an article when the case was dismissed in 2017 (before being resuscitated by the 9th Circuit), but nothing else before or after. Given that that was good news for Luckey, it shows an opposite 'bias' to the one being alleged.

Reuters did publish a number of articles about the case's progress and hasn't published anything about its ending, so I guess you can blame them?

But overall, this is just not a case that's gotten a lot of media attention.

modeless7• 5 years ago

Seems like it was covered in the enthusiast press. IGN and Destructoid as you noted. I also found coverage on Engadget, Gamespot, Polygon.com, VRFocus, UploadVR, Gamersnexus, Gameinformer, VentureBeat, Forbes. As well as mentions of the suit in other articles, used as a way to frame Luckey as someone who is constantly getting sued.

It seems very difficult to find old news articles actually. Google News doesn't turn up most of the stuff I found, I had to explicitly search the individual sources. Who knows what else is missing.

stupidcar• 5 years ago

While I do think many media sources have an obvious self-interested bias against Facebook, I think Luckey is biased himself in how he portrays this affair in his tweets. He talks about how the press covered the filing of the lawsuit, but neglects to mention that it was originally filed in 2015, and has been through numerous twists and turns since, being dismissed, reinstated upon appeal, etc. before finally reaching a jury trial.[1]

Coverage in general has declined as the years have gone by, and this latest trial garnered little attention when it started. It wasn't as if there was minute-by-minute reporting that went dark as soon as the verdict came in. Yes, a loss for Oculus would have been an interesting story, and would have been reported on, but the reality is that Oculus and VR are simply not the zeigeisty topics they were in 2015, or even 2017, and so a "Goliath beats David after six year legal slog" story was never likely to be make headlines.

As someone who spent years fighting against a meritless suit, Luckey is entitled to feel aggrieved, and to wish that its end would be as big news as its beginning. But objectively its easy to see why it wasn't, without necessarily ascribing it to an industry-wide conspiracy of silence.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/10/oculus-catches-a-break-as-...

pdw• 5 years ago

I think this wasn't even a lawsuit against Oculus/Facebook, as far as I can tell Luckey was the sole defendant.

modeless7• 5 years ago

It wasn't as if there was minute-by-minute reporting that went dark as soon as the verdict came in.

Luckey alleges that reporters were there and ready to cover it in case he lost. So there was still interest, just not interest in anything that was good for him.

a "Goliath beats David after six year legal slog" story was never likely to be make headlines.

This is pretty much a statement of the problem right here. If your goal in reading the news is to be entertained, then it's not a problem. But if your goal is to become informed, then this bias against a certain kind of story is presenting a warped version of reality to you while pretending that it is the truth.

It's not a vast conspiracy. It's just incentives at work, but the outcome is lamentable.

clord• 5 years ago

Could this victory be related to the potential metaverse rename of Facebook that was in the news the other day?

wmf• 5 years ago

No.

ent101• 5 years ago

if the site is down for you: https://archive.md/TWsHd

Jury hands victory to Facebook and Oculus VR founder in Rift ownership trial

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