John Carmack Accused of Stealing ZeniMax Technology For Oculus
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
Bolded the telling part. It's exceptionally difficult to pull a lock on learned knowledge a person carries between businesses in similar fields. At most they could push for trade secrets, but they'd have to prove it's an actual trade secret and not just a competing product.
Going off Carmack's twitter, it sounds like none of the code he wrote was brought over, but he(unsurprisingly) remembered how it worked.
If they haven't a patent on the method and can't prove trade secret, then Carmack is legally allowed to rewrite(not re-use) the code wherever and whenever he sees fit.
Reading this is bring back bad memories. :c
I've heard that Zenimax is fairly strict with their full-time people and what they're able to do outside of work, but I'm also assuming JC knew what his contract looked like.
I hope he can work it out!
I had a similar thing happen a couple years ago, after I left my internship at id for another company, after I won a contest for TF2 that eventually led to their in-game hat store. I was very sure I was within the bounds of my contract the whole time, but it was still scary to see something like that from a big corporation aimed right at you.FinalDream said:
I've heard that Zenimax is fairly strict with their full-time people and what they're able to do outside of work, but I'm also assuming JC knew what his contract looked like.
I hope he can work it out!
Well ZeniMax acquired id in 2009, since then they published Rage and Doom BFG both did fine but not great, Carmack also worked on id tech 5 under their wing which wasn't really a success since the only two games that will be using it are Wolf New Order and Doom 4, Cry Engine, UE4 and Frostbite are far more popular. Also work on Doom 4 was greatly extended because the supposed quality didn't meet publisher's standards.josemlopes said:
With all due respect, Carmack is a great engineer who revolutionized gaming as we know it however his achievements under ZeniMax were, objectively speaking, rather scarce. He cost them lots of money actually with all those loses brought by Doom and Rage.
If that's how US copyright law works, then why did they open a trademark lawsuit against Mojang?Raziel said:
And more importantly, if you know so little about either that you can't even tell the difference between of these two unrelated legal concepts, why are you spreading factoids that are true for neither of them, just to excuse ZeniMax's trademark abuse?
Just ridiculous. At this point we should be glad Facebook bought them. Occulus would never be able to hold out on their own. Facebook probably has a telephone book full of lawyers on their side so at very least it's even grounded. Imagine, just like that VR could be dead. This should make the people who are in charge of IP's and Patents take notice. Because last I checked, Zenimax hadn't announced their own VR Headset, but they somehow own something that could put a halt to the whole thing, potentially.
Many people, within and outside of the US, refer to US intellectual property laws (copyright, trademark, and patents) simply as "copyright infringement". On top of that, all categories of US IP law have similar clauses that require an IP holder to pursue anything that might be construed as infringement or essentially lose the right to pursue any perceived or actual infringement. So nitpicking names is a rather asinine thing to do in this case.Alterego-X said:
In the ultimate turn or irony you have used the incorrect IP terminology this time. Fairly certain Oculus didn't use ZeniMax's name, or their name's likeness, without permission.
But the poster is dead on the money. In all contracts like this the company retains the rights to all work conducted by the employee regardless if the work was IP law protected (read "copyrighted", "trademarked", and/or "patented" for the appropriate situation) or not unless explicitly stated to the contrary. Many go so far as to have a clause saying anything made by the employee in their personal time is also company property due to the employee obviously having to use company assists (IE knowledge gained and/or discovered at the company) to create the thing. But wait, there's more. Many contracts specifically state you can not work for another software firm congruently and many go so far as to bar you from the industry for an amount of time after your separation. We don't even know anything about that elephant in the room yet.
Everyone just needs to chill out for a second and find out the intricacies of the situation before they go into a blind ignorant rage at one side or the other.
"whats this? an insanely talented and experienced developer looking to expand his horizons and work on exciting and new ventures?... WELL WE CANT HAVE ANY OF THAT SHIT CAN WE!?"
ugh, nothing is worse than stupid greedy people in positions of power
ugh, nothing is worse than stupid greedy people in positions of power
I feel like ZeniMax has been trying real hard for the last few years to get me to start hating Bethesda by association...
Between things like this, the Scrolls business, Id's lack of quality output (or any output at all) and Elder Scrolls: Online I sometimes think Zenimax is somehow trying to sabotage itself, it's as if they like to just burn money.newwiseman said:
The cynical view as to how US copyright law or other similar areas for that matter works is whichever way creates the most work for lawyers. I believe the US has the largest per capita work force of lawyer's in the world, about 1 in 100. Gotta find work to keep them all busy!Alterego-X said:
Now this loses me a bit. As far as I know, he developed the technology. He made progress in his field of operation as an engineer. That affects his future work because you don't just discard progress, if you find a way to do something better, are you meant to think of another way when you leave the company? How they managed to have ownership of his knowledge in his field is beyond me and frankly shouldn't happen.
So yeah, they're basically arguing they have property rights over John Carmack's mind. Anything he knows about VR technology belongs to them, apparently.Andy Chalk said:
This is one more nail in the coffin that is "justifications that remain for the imposition of copyright law".
Well now, I had a feeling that the whole facebook and oculus thing wasn't really going to work out. Kinda' called it, mostly because facebook wouldn't know how to handle this sort of innovation properly...or just that someone would be an ass about it. So, yeah... Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy.