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Oculus Accused of Destroying Evidence, Zuckerberg To Testify In $2 Billion Lawsuit (arstechnica.com) 136

Posted by BeauHD from the he-said-she-said dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: ZeniMax Media, the parent company of both Bethesda Softworks and Id Software, says it will prove at trial that John Carmack and others at Oculus stole trade secrets to "misappropriate" virtual reality technology that was first developed while Carmack was working at Id Software. What's more, ZeniMax is now accusing Oculus of "intentional destruction of evidence to cover up their wrongdoing." Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Oculus parent company Facebook, is scheduled to respond to those accusations in testimony starting tomorrow, according to a report by Business insider. ZeniMax's statement comes after Carmack testified at trial last week, saying the case was "ridiculous and absurd." His testimony echoed Oculus' initial reaction when ZeniMax's accusations first surfaced in 2014. In court filings leading up to the trial, ZeniMax detailed its case that Carmack, while still an employee at Id Software, "designed the specifications and functionality embodied in the Rift SDK and directed its development." Carmack's technology and guidance allegedly "literally transformed" Oculus founder Palmer Luckey's early Rift prototype from a "primitive virtual reality headset" that was "little more than a display panel." Carmack allegedly used "copyrighted computer code, trade secret information, and technical know-how" from his time at ZeniMax after he moved to Oculus as CTO in 2013. As the trial began last week (as reported by a Law360 summary, registration required), Carmack told the court of his development of a virtual reality demo for Doom 3 in 2012 and his search for a VR headset that would be suitable to run it. That's when he says he got in touch with Luckey, leading to the now legendary E3 2012 demo that introduced Oculus to the public. ZeniMax is seeking $2 billion in damage, which matches the value that Facebook paid for Oculus in 2014. The trial is expected to last three weeks.
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Oculus Accused of Destroying Evidence, Zuckerberg To Testify In $2 Billion Lawsuit More

Oculus Accused of Destroying Evidence, Zuckerberg To Testify In $2 Billion Lawsuit

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  • flip a coin. they're all testifying.

  • This is an interesting case (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16, 2017 @08:37PM (#53680167)

    Apart from the specific facts of what happened while Carmack was working on VR at Id Software.

    It often happens that an employee starts investigating new technology that may not be directly tied to the company's existing products or plans. Typically, the employee will give demos and talks to management and other company employees, but the managers have a decision to make. It's one thing to allow one employee to go off on his own for six months looking into something which might be a breakthrough. It's another thing to assign a team of engineers, including management, marketing, UX and graphics, test, documentation, sysadmin, etc. and capital resources needed to bring the engineer's ideas to fruition. And all the while, there are corporate politics going on, with the "stock" of managers and engineers rising and falling in the firm. And people leave the company for better pastures.

    If the company signs off on the project and says "Let's go!" then, great, chances are the engineer will hunker down and spend at least the next year or two trying to get the now fledgling project off the ground. But what if management balks, or worse, if they assign a manager who has very different ideas about what to do with the technology, and/or who should be the lead engineer? Certainly, the company has paid for the specs, drawings, prototypes and code that the engineer has developed to date, and properly owns them outright. But do they own what's in the engineer's head? Could HP's lawyers have gone after Stephen Wozniak in the '70s after Apple came out with a hit product?

    • Re:This is an interesting case (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) on Monday January 16, 2017 @09:17PM (#53680311)

      But do they own what's in the engineer's head?

      Buried in the small print of my employment contract somewhere, is a clause that states that my employer has the first rights to ANY patent idea that gets hatched out of my bat-shit crazy tiny little mind . . . not just ones that are related to our IT business.

      So, if I came up with a great idea for new toilet paper, I need to at least submit it to our patent boys to take a look. If they like the idea, they patent it in my name, but it gets assigned to my employer. If they don't like it, then I am free to patent it myself . . . provided I pay some legal folks to do the paper work.

      Now if I quit my job, and suddenly the next day submit a patent . . . my former employer will get very suspicious. I am not really sure, but there is probably an exit process that ensures that "everything that happened in Vegas, stays in Vegas." There is also probably some kind of "non-competition" period, in exchange for cash.

      Like the last line of the Pledge of Allegiance to the American Flag . . . "with Freedom and Justice for the Rich." Whoever can afford the best legal team wins the case.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Just because it is in your employment agreement doesn't mean it is enforceable. It depends on state laws. For example, in California:

        http://law.justia.com/codes/california/2011/lab/division-3/2870-2872/2870

        Any provision in an employment agreement which provides that an employee shall assign, or offer to assign, any of his or her rights in an invention to his or her employer shall not apply to an invention that the employee developed entirely on his or her own time...

      • All well and good, but does the old employer have the rights to your basic skillset? If you are a developer and know C/C++ and learned some really neat skills and tricks that make you a master of the craft, does that mean you cannot code somewhere else?

        John Cormack is one of the deep mind behind many of the developments including 3D engines and the like. It would be stupid to expect that he would not continue to develop new technologies and build on his knowledge and skillset. The question is, did he ta

    • But do they own what's in the engineer's head?

      I was working at a video game company when the legal department got this brilliant idea to have everyone in the testing department sign NDA's to protect company intellectual property. Except this NDA had an overly broad clause that required testers must list every past copyrights, trademarks and patents they own, any idea they came up during employment at work or at home belongs to the company, and any idea they come up after they leave the company must be reviewed by the legal department. No one signed the

      • Must've been EA

        • Must've been EA

          Nah, Atari (nee Infogrames) in 2004 or so.

          • Despite my tounge-in-cheek jab at EA, it surprises me that it was Atari, but I can get why Atari tried something like that. They were re-invigorating their IP and Atari Licensing/branding around that time and were trying to grab and claim whatever they could.

    • The way you should look at any court case is what the lawyers aren't talking about. First they aren't talking about copyright, they keep taking about IP, a nebulous term with no legal meaning. They aren't talking about a contract between Zenimax and Carmac that gives them ownership of anything he developed because no such contract exists. And most important of all they are talking about destruction of evidence because they didn't find any evidence in discovery to talk about instead. Usually a destruction of

      • Yeah. Destruction of evidence is a crime - if you claim it, then you need to have proof. If you don't - you open yourself up to a countersuit for slander.

    • ould HP's lawyers have gone after Stephen Wozniak in the '70s after Apple came out with a hit product?

      IIRC, Woz and Jobs headed that off at the pass by getting HP to relinquish the rights before they left.

      But let's invert the question. Let's say you're working for a company inventing new apps. You conceive of Uber, spec it out on company time, then quit and start a private company. Would anyone think that's a reasonable result? Keep in mind that Carmack had the budget/resources to explore fancy new grap

  • What? (Score:5, Funny)

    by ChoGGi ( 522069 ) <slashdot@ch[ ]i.org ['ogg' in gap]> on Monday January 16, 2017 @08:40PM (#53680175) Homepage

    None of the entertaining quotes from Carmack?

    One line of questioning asked whether Carmack knew about a âoesecret meetingâ in a hotel room with Oculus co-founders Nate Mitchell and Palmer Luckey, to which Carmack responded âoeNo I didnâ(TM)t, it was a secret.â A MacBook was brought up during questioning as well, with the lawyer asking why it was never wiped, with Carmack responding: âoeI am not a Mac user unless under duress.â

    http://uploadvr.com/john-carma... [uploadvr.com]

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ChoGGi ( 522069 )

      Ah right Unicode...

      One line of questioning asked whether Carmack knew about a "secret meeting" in a hotel room with Oculus co-founders Nate Mitchell and Palmer Luckey, to which Carmack responded "No I didn't, it was a secret." A MacBook was brought up during questioning as well, with the lawyer asking why it was never wiped, with Carmack responding: "I am not a Mac user unless under duress."

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Mashiki ( 184564 )

        Ah right Unicode...

        Don't worry. One of these days /. will catch up and you'll be able to use it. Of course that will probably happen just before the sun consumes the earth, but it'll happen.

        • Ah right Unicode...

          Don't worry. One of these days /. will catch up and you'll be able to use it. Of course that will probably happen just before the sun consumes the earth, but it'll happen.

          Oh you sweet summer child... that's only 7.6 billion years from now! How can you dream of Slashdot moving that fast?

          More seriously, Slashcode supports Unicode since forever, it's just for some reason not enabled on Slashdot. It's a matter of flipping a config switch and a single query to convert the database. Of course, a single query affecting all rows in a database this big on a live site isn't trivial, but not exactly rocket surgery.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dwpro ( 520418 )
            It must be that that something hooked in (anti-spam, NSA comment validator, AI comment bot for hot grits responses) doesn't support it.

  • ZeniMax is seeking $2 billion in damage, which matches the value that Facebook paid for Oculus in 2014. The trial is expected to last three weeks.

    If the Instagram [investopedia.com] and Whatsapp [yahoo.com] overtures are taken into account, that could loosely translate into tens of dollars.

  • Unless Oculus has a computer with Zenimax owned code on it or exact copies of blueprints/CAD stolen from Zenimax, this is just the lawyers lining their pockets. Slavery is illegal in the US. If you can't retain your employees, you lose the knowledge between their ears. Outside of patented ideas, they can and do take their knowledge to their next employer. This is like suing a software engineer's new company because he worked on GPS mapping software at his old and new company, it's just ridiculous.

    This c

    • Carmack was working on VR shit that directly went over with him to Oculus on ZeniMax's time and dime.

      • Carmack was working on VR shit that directly went over with him to Oculus on ZeniMax's time and dime.

        I strongly doubt it. John Carmack was working on experiments and prototypes. He had an old high speed CRT and a high speed camera, among other things. Yes, he was working with them on ZeniMax's time and dime. With their knowledge and explicit permission. We all knew about it. I'm betting he has it in writing. But having conducted those experiments, he was done with that stuff, hardware and software. He had learned what he needed to know, so he didn't need to drag all that crap with him when he went

        • If he had it in writing, this wouldn't be a lawsuit. Zenimax wouldn't make the very specific claims that they've made now, unless they felt like they had pretty rock solid evidence. When you're dealing with a more "he said, she said" legal tiff, the plaintiffs usually use language that gives the defendant an out. "We believe" or "It appears" or "we suspect" and "may" would show up in the accusations. That way, the defendant has an easier time publicity-wise saying "Whoops, someone goofed. Here's some money."

          In this case, Zenimax is being very, very specific and has been from the start. They say Carmack took files from Zenimax owned systems and that is the *biggest* no-no in the book. It's entirely likely that Zenimax knew he was collaborating with Oculus and was fine with it, but that they didn't want anything Carmack did while working for them to *officially* become Oculus IP. And then, Carmack not only leaves, but if he took things *with* him, that's a pretty severe case of IP theft. Even if none of that code actually got directly used in Oculus products, if it was used as a basis for any component required by Oculus that Carmack had a hand in generating while he was at Zenimax, he's fucked himself.

          The only way for Carmack to have done things cleanly was to have absolutely no possible hint that he would have done what Zenimax is claiming he did so he could claim that he used knowledge in his head but *not* anything produced while working for Zenimax beyond that. And if Zenimax is telling the truth, he fucked up that *one* job.

          • When Zenimax's lawyers talk about all this stolen "IP" they aren't pointing to specific code that was stolen. The entire case revolves around this idea that the Rift couldn't have been developed without Carmack and they own everything in Carmack's head. This is a hallmark of a claim that has no evidence and it's backed up by their claim of destruction of evidence which means they didn't find any stolen information during discovery (so of course it must have been destroyed). Such claims usually precede the c

      • Just working on a similar concept at company A and company B is not enough. Coming up with some specs at company A is sure as shit not enough. Unless they can show that he copied CAD or code onto a thumb drive that was subsequently incorporated exactly as is into Oculus, they don't have a case.

        What most likely happened is the board of directors at Zenimax shit a brick when Oculus was bought by FB for $2B and were ready to chop some heads off in the management/legal team for letting Carmack get away and/or

        • If Zenimax can show he took data with him the day he left, that's probably all the smoking gun that's necessary. Why would he do that if he wasn't going to use it in some form? He had one job when he left id, and that was to get out the door as cleanly and with as little appearance of impropriety as possible. He doesn't appear to have pulled that off.

          • IF is the operative word, and, as the story points out, they are alleging destruction of evidence, which indicates that they were unable to find evidence that he took anything that would help their case.

    • his is like suing a software engineer's new company because he worked on GPS mapping software at his old and new company, it's just ridiculous.

      I don't see this at all, and you're being a bit hyperbolic.

      A company has a right to hire people to write software that belongs to said company...that's a thing that exists and it's not "slavery".

      It seems like you're arguing that a comic character created by an artist for DC while working at DC isn't DC's IP and that character goes with the creator wherever they may w

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Comen ( 321331 )

        This has everything to do with when and where Carmack wrote the code for the Rift I think. I am pretty sure Carmack did not have the standard agreement that most of us get when we work for a big company. idsoftware was bought by Zenimax and Carmack came along with it, but even lots of tech companies the head guy might have a very special agreement different than others in the company. Carmack worked of Aerospace and other things on the side not owned by Zenimax at all. As long as he was good at keeping thes

        • he might have some wording in his contract that will be on his side

          yes this is certainly possible...might go down to what contract has precedence when there are conflicting contracts that overlap...

        • Don't forget he was the primary shareholder of id software before zenimax bought it. He probably didn't have a normal contract.

          • If zenimax had a contract that let them win this case they wouldn't be talking about everything but the contract. This is nothing but a legal attempt at extortion becuase Carmac quit after they bought ID.

            • Actually, with Zenimax talking about him taking actual data from Zenimax servers, you're right. This isn't about a contract dispute. It's about corporate espionage and theft, which is actually a much harder fight to win if you're just pissed off at an ex-employee. And if he took a single file from Zenimax-owned hardware, or a single piece of paper from his desk and his contract did not *specifically* say "You can take any IP regarding VR with you." he's committed IP theft. The only question is to what degre

        • Carmack admitted to copying thousands of e-mails to a personal hard drive on his last day working for ZeniMax

          oops

          http://arstechnica.com/gaming/... [arstechnica.com]

          • Ironically, they turned out to be Hillary Clinton's.

          • That completely depends on the content of the emails and the details of his contract (or lack thereof) with Zenimax.

            • If there's no single email involving Zenimax IP regarding VR or honestly anything else, he might be okay. But let's be real here. Those emails will be LOADED with stuff he shouldn't have taken with him. Not unless his company email was there only to arrange birthday parties for staff.

              • Honestly, as a founder of id software, he may have written into his contract on the acquisition that he got to keep a copy of all of his emails. The grey area may be that Zenimax thought that should only apply to emails in the past, where as Carmack thought it applied to all of his emails up until he left the company. I think the biggest thing here is that if he wasn't allowed to take his email with him, Zenimax should be leading with that, but they aren't. At this point it is a lot of speculation on bot

        • I suspect that what Zenimax is talking about isn't limited to code, but also is likely including R&D resources like latency research and rendering schemes to reduce the negative reactions people can have to VR. (Complete wild-ass guess on my part) Really, the only thing Carmack was entitled to when he walked out the door - barring any kind of written agreement to other effect - was the knowledge in his head.

          Carmack's brilliant, but I suspect he fucked up and took a shortcut possibly with the mindset "We

      • Quote: "It seems like you're arguing that a comic character created by an artist for DC while working at DC isn't DC's IP and that character goes with the creator wherever they may work, which is just ridiculous."

        Answer: No, it's not ridiculous. It's a right. The character's owner is the artist. The same way if J. K. Rowling wants to publish next Harry Potter character book on another publishing company. It's her creation same as the artist' comic character.

        Another thing is that DC (& the rest))/MPAA/RI

        • Nope, with comics it's pretty straightforward. The company owns the characters when it comes to DC and Marvel. Standard work for hire. However, DC and Marvel have both gotten much better about giving creators credit and royalties after they've created something. Create a character that breaks out and anchors a billion dollar franchise? You're going to get paid nicely. But, you have no say in what gets done with that character, who writes it, how many times they die and return, etc. But, you get a check.

      • You are conflating a created thing versus knowing how to create the thing (as well as patent-able designs vs copyright). A created work belongs to the company that paid you to create it (like a comic book character) (and BTW is also protected by copyright). To use your analogy, Zenimax is suing because the guy learned how to create a comic book character (at least some kind of prototype of a character) while working with them, then they canned his project so he left and created a different comic book char

  • The Social Network 2:
    Zuckerberg Gets Deposed About a Bunch More Shit

  • Palmer Luckey wasn't a "tech innovator"...he was a rich geek who frequented VR modding message boards, and just like everyone else took a smartphone screen and hooked it to community-made VR software

    Occulus has always been more about hype than actual tech...that's fine as it goes...if I could start a hype driven company and get it purchased by Facebook for Billions I'd do it, but lets' not pretend or let marketing people write the history.

    I'm not surprised at all that Occulus is being accused of doing this.

    • Occulus has always been more about hype than actual tech.

      Brilliant idea for an April Fools' Day joke article! Company DingDong sues Company SingSong for stealing their hype.

      . . . and they stole half a jar of Mojo, as well!

      • the lawsuit is about IP...and it looks plausible at least

        but yeah, I'd love to see a company sue over stealing hype...good lord...can you imagine the testimony about "value" from "social media"?

    • Palmer Luckey wasn't a "tech innovator"...he was a rich geek who frequented VR modding message boards, and just like everyone else took a smartphone screen and hooked it to community-made VR software

      And stuck some slightly whacky lenses in front of the screen. That's what mostly nobody else was doing. He was (and presumably is) convinced that field of view mattered a lot more than most VR was willing to admit. And since he couldn't curve the screen itself, he found a way to make the light curve instead. Very few people were willing to acknowledge that FOV was important, even within that same community he was frequenting. Plenty of people argued with him, probably including you, complaining that hu

      • Rift lenses are just slightly better versions of the lenses that were in the VFX1 in 1995. FOV is better, but not night and day.

  • Going after Carmack? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by beheaderaswp ( 549877 ) * on Monday January 16, 2017 @09:39PM (#53680411)

    They better have real evidence. If you filled a 100ft by 100ft room full of the smartest people on earth- Carmack would be in the room. That's big game hunting.

    You don't sue a person like that- you make a deal. Because he doesn't need to win- it was his brain. He already won.

    • The lawsuit is claiming they did make a deal with Carmack, and then Oculus stole the results of that deal. I have no idea who is right, but I do know that when someone buys your knowledge to build a proprietary product, you cannot take the plans to your next job.

    • Carmack's on the phone, he'd like a date with you.

  • I have had the data related to this matter in my systems for the last two years.

    I have no idea who is going to come out on top, or whether either side has any merit to their litigation.

    I just keep the systems running. What the business does with them is their business. And apparently of interest to the readers of Arstechnica and Slashdot.

  • ... and if by some miracle it survives and thrives, then try to grab what you think you can.

  • Quote: "Carmack allegedly used '[...] technical know-how'"

    OMG, wait, OOOOMMMMFFFFGGGG!!!!

    Seriously, were they expecting Carmack to be brainwashed so he couldn't use anything he has learnt?

    • OMG, wait, OOOOMMMMFFFFGGGG!!!!

      All I can say to that is "quite". Companies are really rather silly about this. I was hired as a very specialist consultant on a project a few years by $MEGACORP and in the contract they insisted that I do NOT make use of any know-how.

      Okay then! I'll just sit here studiously not using all of my hard won specialist expertise then!

  • Id Software hasn't made 2billion in it's lifetime. Yet Zenimax is asking for 2billion for a little piece of code that Carmack wrote while still being employed at Id Software. This company is bad.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by zuxun ( 4595339 )
      I made a typo "it's" but there is no way to fix it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Their case rests on the idea that Carmack did the important VR work at iD so iD should have been sold for $2bn to Facebook rather than Oculus.

      It's not that hard to understand Zenimax's position.

    • This doesn't spell good things for the future of Bethesda games. They've been on a dumb-it-down trajectory ever since morrowind - and it seems like their current owners are the worst kind of grubbers, which tends to be a recipe for truly terrible games because profitability ends up being counted above quality.

      Look at what happened with Ubisoft as well. Back in the day they created AC2 - one of the best games of all time, featuring a fantastic story and a likeable character who won numerous awards and was th

  • Oh come onnn..., I got VR headset as a present by Oculus, way to try to put a bummer on it. Why the negativity of such a new technology? Should there not be more concern for the public interest than a company's claim to one guy's work?

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