Oculus VR Founder Accused of Fraud

[Lightknight]

Well, that... Sucks.

Not because I especially care what Luckey may or may not have done, but that this could collapse the entire VR scene before it's even gotten off the ground properly.

Not really, in the excitement over the product they've spawned a number of competitors. Some that are already quite comparable.

Yeah, but you conveniently left out the part where I explained that many of them copied oculus's core design.
If it comes to a patent case, these derivative designs would be screwed over just as much as oculus itself would be...

Copyright infringement is harder to work out in court than proving that someone signed a nondisclosure agreement while working on that project for an existing company. Look at Samsung and Apple for example. Did Samsung base their work off of Apple products? Come on, of course they did. Has Samsung or consumers really been punished for them doing so? No, in fact we now have a much more vibrant market with far more cheaper alternatives and Samsung is making money hand over fist or whatever the damn saying is.

Right now, two different companies have Luckey breaching their nondisclosure agreements during the production of the Oculus Rift in a timeline that actually makes sense. The first company paying him to develop a prototype with a second company making the prototype viable.

That is a slam dunk from a prosecution attorney's side. As long as these companies and reproduce the non-disclosure agreement (and both can) then Luckey is in trouble. ZeniMax has amassed a tremendous amount of information against them too.

I get that we all want the Occulus Rift to succeed. But damned if we're not dealing with some highly unethical and illegal practices by the company that Facebook bought. Even Facebook would be a victim here but perhaps moreso if their due process agents failed to discover these complaints floating around.

ZeniMax was actually issuing complaints before Facebook was even a notion in the wind. So the $2 billion is certainly a motivator but so is having your work stolen by an employee or contractor under nondisclosure.

Now, did Sony or the other headset manufacturers copy the Rift's designs and patents? Maybe, maybe not. It all depends on how the patents were written and how they were written. It sounds like this new company coming forward may have had a patent on ultra-wide display VR. In any event, most of the time it's more about paying to use the patent rather than getting up front permission to do so. Our current copyright law just isn't equipped to deal with major companies making this much profit off of stealing ideas. They ding companies for millions of dollars in damages for something they made hundreds of millions off of. It's a complete failure as a deterrent. But a specific individual who actually signed agreements not to disclose the information or use it for personal benefit? The legal system is quite well equipped to deal with that both in civil and criminal court. Luckey could go to prison for longer than some murders at the point.

I mean, corporate espionage regarding this kind of money is prosecuted more harshly than violent crimes. If facebook just settles these disputes out of court then they will be saving Luckey from a lifetime of prison.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Well, that... Sucks.

Not because I especially care what Luckey may or may not have done, but that this could collapse the entire VR scene before it's even gotten off the ground properly.

Not really, in the excitement over the product they've spawned a number of competitors. Some that are already quite comparable.

Yeah, but you conveniently left out the part where I explained that many of them copied oculus's core design.
If it comes to a patent case, these derivative designs would be screwed over just as much as oculus itself would be...

Copyright infringement is harder to work out in court than proving that someone signed a nondisclosure agreement while working on that project for an existing company. Look at Samsung and Apple for example. Did Samsung base their work off of Apple products? Come on, of course they did. Has Samsung or consumers really been punished for them doing so? No, in fact we now have a much more vibrant market with far more cheaper alternatives and Samsung is making money hand over fist or whatever the damn saying is.

Right now, two different companies have Luckey breaching their nondisclosure agreements during the production of the Oculus Rift in a timeline that actually makes sense. The first company paying him to develop a prototype with a second company making the prototype viable.

That is a slam dunk from a prosecution attorney's side. As long as these companies and reproduce the non-disclosure agreement (and both can) then Luckey is in trouble. ZeniMax has amassed a tremendous amount of information against them too.

I get that we all want the Occulus Rift to succeed. But damned if we're not dealing with some highly unethical and illegal practices by the company that Facebook bought. Even Facebook would be a victim here but perhaps moreso if their due process agents failed to discover these complaints floating around.

ZeniMax was actually issuing complaints before Facebook was even a notion in the wind. So the $2 billion is certainly a motivator but so is having your work stolen by an employee or contractor under nondisclosure.

Now, did Sony or the other headset manufacturers copy the Rift's designs and patents?

True, true. But oculus crumbling would be a lesser disaster than dragging down the entire industry in one go. Which a patent could theoretically do.
Losing oculus would be bad, but not catastrophic.
Patent issues with very basic design elements of current VR tech on the other hand... At best you'd get clumsy workarounds... (look at all the awful d-pad like things that were designed because of Nintendo's patent on it...)

 

[Lightknight]

Well, that... Sucks.

Not because I especially care what Luckey may or may not have done, but that this could collapse the entire VR scene before it's even gotten off the ground properly.

Not really, in the excitement over the product they've spawned a number of competitors. Some that are already quite comparable.

Yeah, but you conveniently left out the part where I explained that many of them copied oculus's core design.
If it comes to a patent case, these derivative designs would be screwed over just as much as oculus itself would be...

Copyright infringement is harder to work out in court than proving that someone signed a nondisclosure agreement while working on that project for an existing company. Look at Samsung and Apple for example. Did Samsung base their work off of Apple products? Come on, of course they did. Has Samsung or consumers really been punished for them doing so? No, in fact we now have a much more vibrant market with far more cheaper alternatives and Samsung is making money hand over fist or whatever the damn saying is.

Right now, two different companies have Luckey breaching their nondisclosure agreements during the production of the Oculus Rift in a timeline that actually makes sense. The first company paying him to develop a prototype with a second company making the prototype viable.

That is a slam dunk from a prosecution attorney's side. As long as these companies and reproduce the non-disclosure agreement (and both can) then Luckey is in trouble. ZeniMax has amassed a tremendous amount of information against them too.

I get that we all want the Occulus Rift to succeed. But damned if we're not dealing with some highly unethical and illegal practices by the company that Facebook bought. Even Facebook would be a victim here but perhaps moreso if their due process agents failed to discover these complaints floating around.

ZeniMax was actually issuing complaints before Facebook was even a notion in the wind. So the $2 billion is certainly a motivator but so is having your work stolen by an employee or contractor under nondisclosure.

Now, did Sony or the other headset manufacturers copy the Rift's designs and patents?

True, true. But oculus crumbling would be a lesser disaster than dragging down the entire industry in one go. Which a patent could theoretically do.
Losing oculus would be bad, but not catastrophic.
Patent issues with very basic design elements of current VR tech on the other hand... At best you'd get clumsy workarounds... (look at all the awful d-pad like things that were designed because of Nintendo's patent on it...)

But that's what I'm saying, we're much more likely to be looking at a Samsung V Apple workaround where they just do whatever the heck they want to do and settle it in court later rather than anything going full halt. It usually still ends up being profitable for the big guys.

Besides, what do you think they copied that Oculus had a patent on? A six to nine inch screen? They couldn't patent that, LG, Samsung and Panasonic and Sony already make those and license out the use of those patents. Motion control? There's a ton of patents on that including patents that can also be licensed. So many workarounds.

What do you believe Sony or any of these other companies copied from the Oculus Rift that the Rift can claim is uniquely theirs? I'd be more concerned about software copyright being copied like Carmack was accused of (and subsequently re-wrote all of the code they'd borrowed from ZeniMax under non-disclosure in response to ZeniMax lawyering up).

None of this will break the market. There is nothing Oculus brought to the table that can be considered a truly unique lynchpin upon which all of the market stands. There's some interesting ideas they had about persistence of frames that work but Steam developed those ideas to help the Rift and in doing so didn't protect their IP so there would be a good case for it being public domain.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Well, that... Sucks.

Not because I especially care what Luckey may or may not have done, but that this could collapse the entire VR scene before it's even gotten off the ground properly.

Not really, in the excitement over the product they've spawned a number of competitors. Some that are already quite comparable.

Yeah, but you conveniently left out the part where I explained that many of them copied oculus's core design.
If it comes to a patent case, these derivative designs would be screwed over just as much as oculus itself would be...

Copyright infringement is harder to work out in court than proving that someone signed a nondisclosure agreement while working on that project for an existing company. Look at Samsung and Apple for example. Did Samsung base their work off of Apple products? Come on, of course they did. Has Samsung or consumers really been punished for them doing so? No, in fact we now have a much more vibrant market with far more cheaper alternatives and Samsung is making money hand over fist or whatever the damn saying is.

Right now, two different companies have Luckey breaching their nondisclosure agreements during the production of the Oculus Rift in a timeline that actually makes sense. The first company paying him to develop a prototype with a second company making the prototype viable.

That is a slam dunk from a prosecution attorney's side. As long as these companies and reproduce the non-disclosure agreement (and both can) then Luckey is in trouble. ZeniMax has amassed a tremendous amount of information against them too.

I get that we all want the Occulus Rift to succeed. But damned if we're not dealing with some highly unethical and illegal practices by the company that Facebook bought. Even Facebook would be a victim here but perhaps moreso if their due process agents failed to discover these complaints floating around.

ZeniMax was actually issuing complaints before Facebook was even a notion in the wind. So the $2 billion is certainly a motivator but so is having your work stolen by an employee or contractor under nondisclosure.

Now, did Sony or the other headset manufacturers copy the Rift's designs and patents?

True, true. But oculus crumbling would be a lesser disaster than dragging down the entire industry in one go. Which a patent could theoretically do.
Losing oculus would be bad, but not catastrophic.
Patent issues with very basic design elements of current VR tech on the other hand... At best you'd get clumsy workarounds... (look at all the awful d-pad like things that were designed because of Nintendo's patent on it...)

But that's what I'm saying, we're much more likely to be looking at a Samsung V Apple workaround where they just do whatever the heck they want to do and settle it in court later rather than anything going full halt. It usually still ends up being profitable for the big guys.

Besides, what do you think they copied that Oculus had a patent on? A six to nine inch screen? They couldn't patent that, LG, Samsung and Panasonic and Sony already make those and license out the use of those patents. Motion control? There's a ton of patents on that including patents that can also be licensed. So many workarounds.

What do you believe Sony or any of these other companies copied from the Oculus Rift that the Rift can claim is uniquely theirs? I'd be more concerned about software copyright being copied like Carmack was accused of (and subsequently re-wrote all of the code they'd borrowed from ZeniMax under non-disclosure in response to ZeniMax lawyering up).

None of this will break the market. There is nothing Oculus brought to the table that can be considered a truly unique lynchpin upon which all of the market stands. There's some interesting ideas they had about persistence of frames that work but Steam developed those ideas to help the Rift and in doing so didn't protect their IP so there would be a good case for it being public domain.

The main thing the oculus headset did (ignoring where it may have stolen concepts from) is the highly simplified lens assembly, and the concept of compensating for terrible lenses in software, rather than doing it with the lenses themselves.

That particular arrangement wasn't really used by any VR headset that had existed up until that point, and while not nessesarily ideal from a quality perspective, allowed for a comparatively huge field of view (about 100 degrees), and, importantly, brought the cost down to reasonable levels.

That's nothing to sneeze at, and I have enough reason to believe it would be possible to patent that particular arrangement of lenses and screen with software based compensation.
That's unique enough to be patentable, but, considering what it would mean, that could cause a lot of problems if it's held hostage.

I mean, it's definitely a worst-case scenario type thing, because even with patents you often can get workarounds or deals being made, but it still wouldn't be pretty.

 

[templar1138a]

I'm a little disappointed that this suit isn't for something unrelated to that dizziness machine that will be gone from the market within two years of release.

 

[Lightknight]

I'm a little disappointed that this suit isn't for something unrelated to that dizziness machine that will be gone from the market within two years of release.

The integration of the move to compensate for tilt and the additional resolution largely pushes back the dizziness issue by a fair margin. If the only thing you've experienced was the first dev kit then you've got quite a different world ahead of you with the final product (assuming it's at least the same as the final dev kit but hopefully a bit better).

I'd say the important thing to realize is that it isn't going to be for FPS games. Not the ones we currently play where we hope around and spin 360 degrees in a moment's notice to catch an enemy just right. But this is going to be awesome for a wide variety of other gameplay types including simply watching media for the purpose of escapism.

The things that make you nauseous? It's things like FPS titles. Not sitting on your couch watching a movie in a digital movie theater. If you haven't had the opportunity to enjoy one like that, then I hope you have a friend that's got the new dev kit set up.

 

[Lightknight]

The main thing the oculus headset did (ignoring where it may have stolen concepts from) is the highly simplified lens assembly, and the concept of compensating for terrible lenses in software, rather than doing it with the lenses themselves.

The assembly and software concepts have been around since the 80s if not earlier. Not only that but there are more than one ways to do what they're doing, some of which are public domain. The software just has to be written in a different way.

In order for them to be relevant, they have to have a lynchpin patent without which other companies cannot compete. That does not exist.

That particular arrangement wasn't really used by any VR headset that had existed up until that point, and while not nessesarily ideal from a quality perspective, allowed for a comparatively huge field of view (about 100 degrees), and, importantly, brought the cost down to reasonable levels.

The size of the screen isn't patentable. The use of lenses isn't patentable. All it is, is two lenses in front of a screen. This is patent domain technology because of the holmes stereoscope doing it first and the patent is entirely unenforced as long as they don't copy the exact design. So it's public domain. View master has a better claim to the hardware patent than Oculus and the technology is no different in viewing a split card image than it is viewing a screen that splits the image. So this process is NOT Occulus' by any stretch of the imagination.

Now, their particular design? Sure, that's theirs. But the technology of putting lenses in front of a display at a specific distance to generate the perspective required of 3D? Not by a long shot.

http://www.jeffpolston.com/stereoscope.jpg

That's nothing to sneeze at, and I have enough reason to believe it would be possible to patent that particular arrangement of lenses and screen with software based compensation.
That's unique enough to be patentable, but, considering what it would mean, that could cause a lot of problems if it's held hostage.

What you need to do is present a specific patent that you believe they have exclusive rights to that is somehow being infringed upon by other companies.

From what I'm seeing, the Rift's patents are just the headmount design:

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/D701206.pdf

They literally just patented the ornamental design. Other people already patented the other setup tech. Look, their patent even references the original Holmes patent.

They made their SDK software open source to encourage developers to work with it. So they don't even have that.

ZeniMax, Apple, and Sony have all been awarded patents for their designs too. In fact, it's ZeniMax that is suing Oculus for patent infringement. I strongly recommend you take a look at their complaints against Luckey. It's significant and lays out a timeline of and public citation that you can verify yourself on the internet that all but condemns the Rift's nefarious activities. http://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/assets/4490157/1-main.pdf

Now, can the Rift shake the charges and invalidate the NDA with the backing of Facebook funded lawyers? Maybe. They're currently trying to debate whether or not the NDA (which Luckey admits having signed) should have defined the term "proper purpose". Meaning that they did sign it but are trying to weasel out of it now. It's quite shady and you should consider the Oculus Rift to be born out of lies and intellectual property theft even if it comes out and ends up being the best thing ever. They stole from companies that have been pouring money into this problem for decades. The NDA actually just said he couldn't use contract-protected information unless it was a "proper purpose" that ZeniMax agreed to. So it actually isn't that undefined since its definition is really just "only things that Zenimax approves" Unless it is to his company's employees and officers.

So I don't think they'll win, but it's possible and then ZeniMax would be robbed of decades of research and development as well as being praised as the real pioneers here like they actually deserve.

But can you please tell specifically what patent you think the Rift holds that specifically patents VR technology?

 

[CrystalShadow]

Spoiler: previous text

The main thing the oculus headset did (ignoring where it may have stolen concepts from) is the highly simplified lens assembly, and the concept of compensating for terrible lenses in software, rather than doing it with the lenses themselves.

The assembly and software concepts have been around since the 80s if not earlier. Not only that but there are more than one ways to do what they're doing, some of which are public domain. The software just has to be written in a different way.

In order for them to be relevant, they have to have a lynchpin patent without which other companies cannot compete. That does not exist.

That particular arrangement wasn't really used by any VR headset that had existed up until that point, and while not nessesarily ideal from a quality perspective, allowed for a comparatively huge field of view (about 100 degrees), and, importantly, brought the cost down to reasonable levels.

The size of the screen isn't patentable. The use of lenses isn't patentable. All it is, is two lenses in front of a screen. This is patent domain technology because of the holmes stereoscope doing it first and the patent is entirely unenforced as long as they don't copy the exact design. So it's public domain. View master has a better claim to the hardware patent than Oculus and the technology is no different in viewing a split card image than it is viewing a screen that splits the image. So this process is NOT Occulus' by any stretch of the imagination.

Now, their particular design? Sure, that's theirs. But the technology of putting lenses in front of a display at a specific distance to generate the perspective required of 3D? Not by a long shot.

http://www.jeffpolston.com/stereoscope.jpg

That's nothing to sneeze at, and I have enough reason to believe it would be possible to patent that particular arrangement of lenses and screen with software based compensation.
That's unique enough to be patentable, but, considering what it would mean, that could cause a lot of problems if it's held hostage.

What you need to do is present a specific patent that you believe they have exclusive rights to that is somehow being infringed upon by other companies.

From what I'm seeing, the Rift's patents are just the headmount design:

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/D701206.pdf

They literally just patented the ornamental design. Other people already patented the other setup tech. Look, their patent even references the original Holmes patent.

They made their SDK software open source to encourage developers to work with it. So they don't even have that.

ZeniMax, Apple, and Sony have all been awarded patents for their designs too. In fact, it's ZeniMax that is suing Oculus for patent infringement. I strongly recommend you take a look at their complaints against Luckey. It's significant and lays out a timeline of and public citation that you can verify yourself on the internet that all but condemns the Rift's nefarious activities. http://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/assets/4490157/1-main.pdf

Now, can the Rift shake the charges and invalidate the NDA with the backing of Facebook funded lawyers? Maybe. They're currently trying to debate whether or not the NDA (which Luckey admits having signed) should have defined the term "proper purpose". Meaning that they did sign it but are trying to weasel out of it now. It's quite shady and you should consider the Oculus Rift to be born out of lies and intellectual property theft even if it comes out and ends up being the best thing ever. They stole from companies that have been pouring money into this problem for decades. The NDA actually just said he couldn't use contract-protected information unless it was a "proper purpose" that ZeniMax agreed to. So it actually isn't that undefined since its definition is really just "only things that Zenimax approves" Unless it is to his company's employees and officers.

So I don't think they'll win, but it's possible and then ZeniMax would be robbed of decades of research and development as well as being praised as the real pioneers here like they actually deserve.

But can you please tell specifically what patent you think the Rift holds that specifically patents VR technology?

~sigh~ you're turning things completely on their head if you think I said the rift itself is patented.

And again, you're picking and choosing things. That lens assembly by itself is useless. it works because of software compensation

Software patents are inherently flaky, but they still show up from time to time.

But, that's beside the point.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2686562/oculus-open-sources-original-rift-developer-kits-firmware-schematics-and-mechanics.html

It's fairly obvious that holding patents on a design you've made open-source, and expect others to copy and adapt would be stupid.

But that really wasn't the point I was getting at.

The problem isn't whether oculus has patents. It's do other companies hold patents on what oculus created?

Pointing out that other companies have 'better' claims on it than oculus means you didn't understand what I said in the first place.
That is the whole point.

And it doesn't matter whether it's true or not, so asking me to prove what patents there might be in existence is beside the point.
I was posing a hypothetical situation, that if true, could cause huge problems.
Whether it actually is true or not is a different issue.

The hypothetical situation at question is roughly this (since you apparently didn't get it the first time)
1. Oculus/ key members of oculus steal designs/technology from company X
2. Oculus designs a headset based on these stolen designs.
3. Oculus makes these designs open-source, and lets other companies copy them.
4. Other companies start producing headsets containing elements copied from Oculus's design.
5. It turns out Company X has patents on some critical elements of Oculus's design, and can prove it.

Now tell me, what consequences would this have, if true?

The point however isn't 'is this true?' it is, 'this would be a very bad situation'.

Do you understand what I'm getting at yet? Or do I have to go even further?

 

[Dango]

I don't actually have anything relevant to say about this story other than I still think Luckey Palmer is a sick name.

 

[Lightknight]

The hypothetical situation at question is roughly this (since you apparently didn't get it the first time)
1. Oculus/ key members of oculus steal designs/technology from company X
2. Oculus designs a headset based on these stolen designs.
3. Oculus makes these designs open-source, and lets other companies copy them.
4. Other companies start producing headsets containing elements copied from Oculus's design.
5. It turns out Company X has patents on some critical elements of Oculus's design, and can prove it.

Now tell me, what consequences would this have, if true?

The point however isn't 'is this true?' it is, 'this would be a very bad situation'.

Do you understand what I'm getting at yet? Or do I have to go even further?

What I'm saying is that there is nothing within the Oculus that matters to other products. There's no patent that prevents you from writing a unique program that does the same thing other programs do. There's no patent that prevents someone from designing their own VR headset.

So there is no turn-key technology they developed that would prevent another company from developing their own headset and writing their own program. It's simply the nature of software IP law. The only issue that could come up is if the SDK was somehow owned by another company (it isn't, Carmack rewrote the whole thing the moment Bethesda issued a suit against them. Bethesda can only claim that Oculus benefitted unfairly from the use of private code they had access to) is that people would have to start using another SDK.

There is nothing preventing you from writing your own SDK right now. In fact, you could literally go through the SDK code and rewrite every clause in a different way or different language and you could copy write the resulting code without fear of a legitimate lawsuit against you.