A few days ago Zeni ax issued a statement that Oculus VR had stolen property belonging to the publisher, and was using it with the help of John Carmack to create the Oculus Rift. The company claims that it wasn’t compensated when it worked with Oculus, and that it was owed. Well now Oculus have returned with their own statement refuting all the claims that Zenimax made, stating that at no point before John Carmack joined the company had Zenimax made any sort of claim. The following list of counter claims are below.
- There is not a line of Zenimax code or any of its technology in any Oculus products.
- John Carmack did not take any intellectual property from Zenimax.
- Zenimax has misstated the purposes and language of the Zenimax non-disclosure agreement that Palmer Luckey signed.
- A key reason that John permanently left Zenimax in August of 2013 was that Zenimax prevented John from working on VR, and stopped investing in VR games across the company.
- Zenimax canceled VR support for Doom 3 BFG when Oculus refused Zenimax’s demands for a non-dilutable equity stake in Oculus.
- Zenimax did not pursue claims against Oculus for IP or technology, Zenimax has never contributed any IP or technology to Oculus, and only after the Facebook deal was announced has Zenimax now made these claims through its lawyers.
- Despite the fact that the full source code for the Oculus SDK is available online (developer.oculusvr.com), Zenimax has never identified any ‘stolen’ code or technology.
Basically what Oculus are saying is that John Carmack did not steal intellectual property, Zenimax has not understood the non disclosure agreement between the two companies, that Zenimax pulled the plug on Doom 3 BFG for Rift because Oculus wouldn’t let them buy a part of the business, and that the publicly available Oculus SDK has no code belonging to Zenimax in it. The ball is now in Zenimax’s court to refute these allegations, and I’m sure we’ll hear something from them rather soon.
Source: MCVUK
camdaz
Looks like they waited until after the Facebook deal to get a few extra pennies.
blarty
Why does this have to do with actual stolen code? Carmack was in a unique position in that he worked for both Occlusion and Zenimax – all he had to do was work more than his allotted time On Occlusion, meaning he was being paid for that time by Zenimax and his Zenimax contract regarding IP kicks in. Does Lucky honestly believe in corporate altruism?
TSBonyman
It’s interesting to see this sort of fighting over a technology which still has a lot to prove.
Forrest_01
It’s a little bit like two kids arguing over a stone in the playground (… But through the courts);
Kid 1: That’s my stone.
Kid 2: No it isn’t, I saw it first.
Kid 1: Uh-uh, I touched it just now, so it’s mine.
Kid 2: But you left it there, so finders keepers.
Kid 1: But I spat on it. Look, there it is.
Kid 2: Spitting on a product does not prove ownership rights to the IP
… Or something to that effect.