John Carmack's former employer claims he stole tech for Oculus VR when he left

http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/01/zenimax-claims-oculus-stole/

by pytrin • 12 years ago

144 87 12 years ago

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.

homulilly2• 12 years ago

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.

wdewind• 12 years ago

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.

clavalle3• 12 years ago

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.

taiki2• 12 years ago

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

angersock2• 12 years ago

Are you familiar with Carmack at all? Like, ever talked with him?

He's friendly and is exactly the sort of engineer that helps teach others how to do things--just look at the GPL releases of all the old Quake stuff when it came out (back in the 90s!).

stonemetal• 12 years ago

It seems like Carmack produced Oculus demos of Id software before he left Id. May be he worked with the Oculus guys to support that effort and talked them into making changes to make those demos work. It would be rather unsurprising to me, close working relationships between game studios and hardware vendors (like graphics card, and console companies) happen all the time.

justin662• 12 years ago

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.

Back in the day id programmers shared snippets of code with whoever they wanted - they didn't need to ask any corporate overseer for permission. There were a few little bits found when the GarageGames/Tribes engine code was first released, for example. (pretty sure they got those lines of code from Brian Hook, but it's been a long time...)

lawnchair_larry2• 12 years ago

He was very openly employed by both companies at the same time. Eventually he left iD because they didn't like sharing him.

VikingCoder• 12 years ago

provided

That's the key word, isn't it.

If the Oculus guys weren't absolutely clear about who owned what, and what the patents were, then they're screwed.

By which I mean, they will for sure be embroiled in a long and costly legal battle, unless they settle.

clavalle3• 12 years ago

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• 12 years ago

"Trade secrets" might be a better term there.

lawnchair_larry2• 12 years ago

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.

aw3c2• 12 years ago

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

NDizzle2• 12 years ago

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

daenz• 12 years ago

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.

waps• 12 years ago

I think a little CEO is real mad that

1) He refused John Carmack's pitch for a new project. Stupid.

2) That got his best employee to quit the company and start a new one. Double stupid.

3) That new company he has no rights to was worth $2 billion a year and a half later. Management-level stupid. (note I don't care what it's "value" is, someone paid 2 billion for it, that makes it worth 2 billion)

And now of course, the lawyer wants some money. It isn't fair that something I could have had but didn't want was sold for $2 billion ! Obviously they owe me for the idea !

I have a 2 year old daughter that has this sort of behaviour too. I also have a 5 year old daughter, who has grown out of it (that wasn't easy, let me tell you). I'd expect the CEO of a legal company to ...

Dammit I almost got through that last sentence without laughing ... and crying.

NDizzle2• 12 years ago

Yes, there may actually be some legal standing.

I've typed and erased this response 3 times because I tend to wander, but the I think what irks me the most about things like this is that they will end up concentrating on some physical object, like some code that he created in his spare time while still under their employment.

They won't even acknowledge the fact that this is a titan of productivity and a genius programmer who could probably conjure up anything he's written in the past N decades given an afternoon.

homulilly2• 12 years ago

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

scrabble• 12 years ago

I came in here to post this exact quote. This is just super ridiculous. Any learning you did while employed is property of that employer. I seriously hope there no one comes up with a device that makes that possible to enforce.

Karellen• 12 years ago

I'm surprised they employed him at all, if that's their attitude.

If they expect "the proprietary ... know-how" and experience of all employees to remain confidential, then surely they can't have expected him to use any of the knowledge he gained working anywhere else previously, when he started working for them.

If that's the case, employing Carmack gains you nothing over employing a fresh new graduate, except that it costs a heck of a lot more.

Or are they just another bunch of fucking hypocrites?

wreegab• 12 years ago

Oculus has used and exploited ZeniMax's technology and intellectual property without authorization, compensation or credit to ZeniMax

When I read this, my thoughts went to all the smart people who created something awesome while employed at a company and were never personally credited.

quasque• 12 years ago

The whole idea of a corporation and how we generally view this strange social/financial entity is giving me pause.

I mean, so much of our discourse is tied up in exchanging opinions of companies rather than individuals.

Feels a bit strange now I come to think of it. Having all these overbearing hierarchical organisations of people, that end up directly or indirectly controlling large parts of your life.

cromwellian• 12 years ago

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

chollida1• 12 years ago

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), 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.

drawkbox• 12 years ago

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• 12 years ago

Zenimax owns id, not the other way around.

NoPiece2• 12 years ago

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• 12 years ago

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...

NoPiece2• 12 years ago

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...

pachydermic• 12 years ago

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... Apparently that was Bethesda Softworks, not Zenimax... but I wonder who was really behind it.

DerpDerpDerp2• 12 years ago

Or Carmack pitched an early version of the technology to Zenimax and subsequently worked on parts of what was eventually used by Oculus during work hours. Both pitching it as a work product and working on it during work hours gives Zenimax some standing to talk about it being done by one of their employees.

It's not really impossible to conceive that they might actually have a valid claim.

loup-vaillant4• 12 years ago

To have a valid claim, Carmack must have had copied some code or data he produced during those hours. If he merely recreated the work from memory, Zenimax have nothing.

Unless recreating non-patented work from memory is actually forbidden? That would be horrible.

kayoone• 12 years ago

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.

marvin• 12 years ago

The problem here is the standard of salaried work in the United States. Your job pays you a salary to do some tasks specified in a contract, with no hourly minimum or maximum. So let's say you have a hobby that closely intersects, but does not overlap with your tasks at work. You make something valuable in your spare time. Does it belong to your employer, or could they plausibly claim damages?

omilu• 12 years ago

For a company to claim 100% ownership seems unfair to me, %50 to the creator and %50 to the company, is reasonable, but totally unenforceable.

enraged_camel• 12 years ago

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).

mrjatx• 12 years ago

Nobody has said that he was working on this while "at work" or not while shirking his salaried duties.

Imagine you're a chef. You design and cook menu items at your day job, then you go home and make pasta alfredo in your own way. You go to a new restaurant and you bring your pasta alfredo influence to it. Should restaurant 1 have any rights to the pasta alfredo you designed at home that was not even in use at their restaurant? Should restaurant 1 be able to charge you for making your pasta alfredo at home?

Obviously the big issue here is stealing code snippets or working on other products on the clock of another employer. But the blanket "anything you make while employed here at any capacity is ours" is just ridiculous and needs to go away.

akmiller• 12 years ago

That is actually not true. Any software you develop whether on company time or not belongs to you UNLESS you sign some type of intellectual agreement with the company prior to the development of that work.

kemayo• 12 years ago

At least in the US "a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment" is called "work for hire" [1], and the employer is the legal author for copyright purposes.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire

mathattack2• 12 years ago

This is actually a complex issue. Based on my non-lawyerly understanding, there are a few levels...

1 - If your employment contract says that the company owns 100% of your work unless otherwise approved, you have limited legal standing. This means all side projects must be approved, or the company owns it.

2 - Some employment contracts are more specific that they only own what happens during working hours. This can be tough if you work on a project during working hours, and they reject it. You definitely can't take the code with you, but you can keep what's in your head.

3 - If you pitch a side project done on your own time to a company who only owns what's produced during your working hours, then you have a right to take it with you if you offer it to them and they don't want it.

I actually don't consider #1 so awful. As a prospective employee you should negotiate it with a price. Similar to if someone wants a very long non-compete. It's only immorale if they spring it on you after you start. If they hand it to you during salary negotiations, then you can put a price on it, or go elsewhere. ("I'm happy to accept a 1 year non-compete, if you pay me 5% more, and give me 6 months severance if I'm fired for any reason, including with cause.")

nightcracker• 12 years ago

I consider #1 to be god awful, and I refuse to sign any contracts with such clause.

It would be similar to saying a book writer who's main job is a typist would have to get his book approved (and potentially denied), or an artist would lose rights to his works he makes during his free time. It's out of this world wrong.

mindcrime• 12 years ago

Note that - depending on the details - state law my trump one of those "We own your brain 100% of the time, 24x7" sort of agreements, even if you did sign it. There are states where the law simply does not permit an employer to enforce such an overly broad claim to an individual's intellectual output.

Now if the work in question was legitimately done on "work time", in the course of a work related initiative, then it seems clear that the IP does belong to the employer in most cases.

The question to me (coming at this as a non lawyer) is where the line is between "the IP" per-se and general knowledge and know-how that you absorb by osmosis over time, and which you clearly should not be restricted from accessing. IOW, if Programmer A learns to use a "for loop" during his first programming job, does that mean he can never use a "for loop" again? Obviously not...

That certainly seems like the way things should be. :-)

wil4212• 12 years ago

but I find the idea that businessmen own everything a programmer works on just because he's an employee abhorrent.

Just to play devils advocate here, sometimes it is the businessman with the idea and the programmers who implement the idea and create the tech. Should the Idea man get the rights or the "workers" digging the trench.

A lot of large companies have policies that anything you make in your off time is owned by them. I can see why they do it my company has probably spent thousands on training and employee development and they want the return.

It may not be a popular thing for some people (including myself) but I see why they do it.

gnaritas2• 12 years ago

A lot of large companies have policies that anything you make in your off time is owned by them.

And that's just wrong, plain and simple. There's no excuse this is allowed.

I can see why they do it my company has probably spent thousands on training and employee development and they want the return.

Training someone is not a valid claim to all uses of those skills; off-time is off-time. Just because someone applies a skill they learned at work in their off-time in no way justifies the company owing that work.

ensmotko• 12 years ago

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

kevingadd• 12 years ago

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• 12 years ago

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.

callesgg• 12 years ago

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• 12 years ago

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.

rageear• 12 years ago

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

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

snorkel• 12 years ago

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.

grayclhn• 12 years ago

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

madrox• 12 years ago

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• 12 years ago

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• 12 years ago

so here's the agreement Oculus allegedly broke: http://recode.net/2014/05/01/heres-the-agreement-oculus-alle...

mcv• 12 years ago

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

John Carmack's former employer claims he stole tech for Oculus VR when he left

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