ZeniMax Awarded $500 Million in VR Patent Lawsuit Against Oculus

btarunr · Feb 2, 2017

ZeniMax Media Inc. has been awarded a $500 million settlement in a virtual reality (VR) patent dispute with Facebook-owned Oculus. A jury in Texas found Oculus in violation of VR patents held by ZeniMax. Oculus in 2014 was acquired by Facebook in a $2 billion deal. ZeniMax owns id Software, a pioneering game studio led by John Carmack. ZeniMax alleges that core components of Oculus Rift VR headset were developed by John Carmack, when he was working at a ZeniMax subsidiary, making them ZeniMax' intellectual property. Carmack left ZeniMax to work for Oculus in 2013.

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eidairaman1 · Feb 2, 2017

Never heard of ZeniMax, sounds like a petty lawsuit because Oculous was succeeding.

Ferrum Master · Feb 2, 2017

eidairaman1 said:
Never heard of ZeniMax, sounds like a petty lawsuit because Oculous was succeeding.

What? Just came out of your cave?

Xzibit · Feb 2, 2017

eidairaman1 said:
Never heard of ZeniMax, sounds like a petty lawsuit because Oculous was succeeding.

Hard for it to be petty when

ArsTechnica said:
Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey had violated a non-disclosure agreement with the company when working on early prototypes of the Rift VR headset, according to a copy of the verdict obtained by Ars Technica. Oculus was also found liable for copyright and trademark infringement for misuse of certain ZeniMax code and logos. The company, Luckey, and Iribe were also found liable for false designation regarding misuse of certain ZeniMax trademarks.

RejZoR · Feb 2, 2017

eidairaman1 said:
Never heard of ZeniMax, sounds like a petty lawsuit because Oculous was succeeding.

Zenimax is a multimedia conglomerate, also an owner of Bethesta Softworks (the makers of The Elder Scrolls) and id Software (needs no explanation).

ZoneDymo · Feb 2, 2017

see and this shit right here

"ZeniMax alleges that core components of Oculus Rift VR headset were developed by John Carmack, when he was working at a ZeniMax subsidiary, making them ZeniMax' intellectual property. Carmack left ZeniMax to work for Oculus in 2013."

Is what I find super scary, like the company owns you...
Fucking John Carmack MADE ID software, not the other way around, and he is very much into a lot of stuff outside computer engineering like launching Rockets/Nasa type stuff, guess that is all owned by Zenimax as well huh.
Its like you sell your soul to a company when you work for them....

Ubersonic · Feb 2, 2017

ZoneDymo said:
see and this shit right here

"ZeniMax alleges that core components of Oculus Rift VR headset were developed by John Carmack, when he was working at a ZeniMax subsidiary, making them ZeniMax' intellectual property. Carmack left ZeniMax to work for Oculus in 2013."

Is what I find super scary, like the company owns you...
Fucking John Carmack MADE ID software, not the other way around, and he is very much into a lot of stuff outside computer engineering like launching Rockets/Nasa type stuff, guess that is all owned by Zenimax as well huh.
Its like you sell your soul to a company when you work for them....

You're looking at it from the wrong angle, ZeniMax owns iD, iD designed some software, one of iD's employees left the company and took copies of the software/etc with them.

Octopuss · Feb 2, 2017

So the whole Oculus was stolen from the original developer and rebranded for Facebook?
Wait, I can't even find any information about Zenimax having a VR product.
I don't understand.

uuuaaaaaa · Feb 2, 2017

Octopuss said:
So the whole Oculus was stolen from the original developer and rebranded for Facebook?
Wait, I can't even find any information about Zenimax having a VR product.
I don't understand.

John Carmack (ex-idSoftware (founder), now Facebook/Oculus) offered to help Lucky Palmer (the guy behind the original oculus concept) in the development of the Oculus rift (firmware/software and overall improvement) after he saw what he was doing. Carmack took the oculus and made it good for VR. He then adapted Doom 3 to run on VR using a modified idtech5 (Rage's/Wolfenstein's The new order engines, and now idtech666 (doom 2016) which is an improved idtech5). Carmack did all this when he was at idSoftware (owned by Zenimax). Carmack later asked Zenimax to develop products (oculus rift, games etc) exclusively for VR but Zenimax denied him the funds. He then left idSoftware (Zenimax) and was hired by Facebook, who had bought Oculus (Palmer's company). Allegedly Carmack illegally took IP(software) that he developed specifically for VR while he was working for idSotware (Owned by Zenimax) and is now using that (he is working for oculus/facebook).

Ferrum Master · Feb 2, 2017

uuuaaaaaa said:
John Carmack (ex-idSoftware (founder)

cyneater · Feb 2, 2017

Zeni max are a bunch of hard people to deal with...

Cant go into many details a doom3 mod I was working on with a team was going to release it as a stand alone game.

Zenimax owns ID and did something to the lighting in doom 3 its not a aprt of the open source doom3 stuff.
Got a letter please either buy out engine or make your own lighting....

uuuaaaaaa · Feb 2, 2017

cyneater said:
Zeni max are a bunch of hard people to deal with...

Cant go into many details a doom3 mod I was working on with a team was going to release it as a stand alone game.

Zenimax owns ID and did something to the lighting in doom 3 its not a aprt of the open source doom3 stuff.
Got a letter please either buy out engine or make your own lighting....

I think that Carmack changed that Patented part of the engine when the source code was released.

AsRock · Feb 2, 2017

ZoneDymo said:
see and this shit right here

"ZeniMax alleges that core components of Oculus Rift VR headset were developed by John Carmack, when he was working at a ZeniMax subsidiary, making them ZeniMax' intellectual property. Carmack left ZeniMax to work for Oculus in 2013."

Is what I find super scary, like the company owns you...
Fucking John Carmack MADE ID software, not the other way around, and he is very much into a lot of stuff outside computer engineering like launching Rockets/Nasa type stuff, guess that is all owned by Zenimax as well huh.
Its like you sell your soul to a company when you work for them....

Well look at UBI using the Tom Clancy's name and that poor guy ( rest in piece and all that ) is dead. Hope fully though UBI are going do a good job of Woodlands to give back of whats been lost for sure a long time with the Ghost Recon series and not have another turd with the guys name on it.

yogurt_21 · Feb 2, 2017

ZoneDymo said:
see and this shit right here

"ZeniMax alleges that core components of Oculus Rift VR headset were developed by John Carmack, when he was working at a ZeniMax subsidiary, making them ZeniMax' intellectual property. Carmack left ZeniMax to work for Oculus in 2013."

Is what I find super scary, like the company owns you...
Fucking John Carmack MADE ID software, not the other way around, and he is very much into a lot of stuff outside computer engineering like launching Rockets/Nasa type stuff, guess that is all owned by Zenimax as well huh.
Its like you sell your soul to a company when you work for them....

In technology law anything you develop for a company is legally theirs. You own nothing.

If you want to own it, you must go into business for yourself.

This is why Notch is worth 1.5 billion despite a single success and Carmack's net worth isn't even publish worthy despite a list of successful games that spans several pages.

Ubersonic · Feb 2, 2017

yogurt_21 said:
In technology law anything you develop for a company is legally theirs. You own nothing.

Only if your contract states as such.

It's actually quite comical that the reason iD software exists in the first place is because Softdisk didn't have that clause, so when Carmack/etc walked out and took the code/projects they had been developing with them to launch iD there was nothing they could do. It would be lolworthy if it was that experience which caused Carmack to ensure iD had the clause which he has now fallen foul of XD

yogurt_21 · Feb 2, 2017

Ubersonic said:
Only if your contract states as such.

It's actually quite comical that the reason iD software exists in the first place is because Softdisk didn't have that clause, so when Carmack/etc walked out and took the code/projects they had been developing with them to launch iD there was nothing they could do. It would be lolworthy if it was that experience which caused Carmack to ensure iD had the clause which he has now fallen foul of XD

that does not seem to match at all...

for one, this isn't a contract clause, it's how ownership works.

2nd carmack and his team continued to work on softdisks games after founding id software as a part of their contract, but there is nothing indicating that they took anything of softdisks to use in any project for id software.

the wiki page specifically mentions softdisk continuing to use the game engines carmack and his team designed for future projects without him

Softdisk later hired a new team to create new titles using the game engines of the earlier games, including the later founders of JAM Productions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softdisk

Ie they owned everything Carmack did while he worked there and the skills aquired there allowed him to go onto bigger and better things with id software where he made new game engines with the same guys that were owned by id, not softdisks.

at any rate he owned nothing, id and softdisks did. Now he's in trouble for forgetting that.

Shihab · Feb 2, 2017

Carmack's thoughts on the [a part of] the trial.
Back when this drama started, I was somewhat inclined to believe Oculus might be at the wrong here, up until Zenimax went full, Oracle-esque retard...

ZoneDymo · Feb 2, 2017

AsRock said:
Well look at UBI using the Tom Clancy's name and that poor guy ( rest in piece and all that ) is dead. Hope fully though UBI are going do a good job of Woodlands to give back of whats been lost for sure a long time with the Ghost Recon series and not have another turd with the guys name on it.

Ermm I dont think you know how that works.
Ubisoft has the name Tom Clancy because it sells, but they have to pay the children etc for using that name, same for Collin Mcrea with the rally games back then or John Madden for "football".

They pay to use that name on their products.

eidairaman1 · Feb 2, 2017

This Lawsuit just means Zenimax is jealous because they never launched VR where Oculus Did.

AsRock · Feb 5, 2017

ZoneDymo said:
Ermm I dont think you know how that works.
Ubisoft has the name Tom Clancy because it sells, but they have to pay the children etc for using that name, same for Collin Mcrea with the rally games back then or John Madden for "football".

They pay to use that name on their products.

True, is kinda sad though, then again people normally make more money when they are actually dead :|.

remixedcat · Feb 6, 2017

Take that cuckerberg!!!

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ZeniMax Awarded $500 Million in VR Patent Lawsuit Against Oculus

btarunr

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