fractal_butterfly said:
Also going by the original news, the court found that "[Occulus] did not misappropriate trade secrets, but [they] had violated a non-disclosure agreement" (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/169432-ZeniMax-Awarded-500-Million-in-Oculus-Lawsuit). If they had been "stealing code", it would have been the former, not the latter.
It all boils down to this "non-literal" copying allegations, which is bullshit in itself.
No it doesn't. The actual complaint is very explicit:
NATURE OF THE ACTION
1.Under a binding Non-Disclosure Agreement, ZeniMax provided Palmer Luckey and Oculus VR, LLC with access to intellectual property developed by ZeniMax after years of research and investment. This valuable intellectual property included copyrighted computer code, trade secret information, and technical know-how. The Non-Disclosure Agreement expressly provides that ZeniMax?s intellectual property is confidential, owned exclusively by ZeniMax, and cannot be disclosed to or used by any third parties without ZeniMax?s prior written approval. Defendants have wrongfully taken that ZeniMax intellectual property and commercially exploited it for their own gain.
What the court decision essentially boils down to is breach of contract. Oculus and Zenimax had a contract saying Oculus were allowed to look at Zenimax's code and hardware, but they were not allowed to use it, or anything derived from it, commercially without Zenimax's permission. Oculus broke this contract. Everything else is little more than the details of exactly how they broke it.
In fact, the more I look into it, the worse it looks. This was not simply a case of Carmack using code he'd developed while working at Zenimax, the Oculus Rift only exists at all because of the work and money Zenimax put into it. The original Rift appears to have largely been developed by Zenimax (and not just Carmack) based on an extremely rough concept that Luckey was unable to develop further himself, Luckey and Iribe were both fully aware of the extent of the work Zenimax had done, and were both fully aware of the agreement the companies had and even had discussions regarding licensing the work for commercial use. They offered Zenimax a 2% share in Oculus, Zenimax turned that down and asked for a larger share, Oculus basically told them to fuck off and, after a period of begging for more support from Zenimax (while Carmack and others continued to work on the Rift), stopped acknowledging that Zenimax had ever had anything to do with it.
Carmack, for his part, appears to have repeatedly lied to both Zenimax and the court, and actually broke two other contracts with Zenimax regarding working for them (he was supposed to be working as a part-time technical advisor for id after his employment with them ended, but he immediately went to work full time at Oculus), and regarding recruiting Zenimax employees (he recruited 5 of the staff who had worked on the Rift, who all quit simultaneously to move to Oculus).
All this information, plus much more, can be found here [https://www.scribd.com/document/321898098/Zenimax-v-Oculus-Amended-Complaint], as well as in other related documents (unfortunately the actual court decision is behind a paywall). While this is a complaint document, and so obviously biased towards Zenimax, all of the above are simple matters of fact - aside from the complaint including plenty of supporting documentation including correspondence with Luckey and Iribe, I don't think any of it has actually been disputed. Luckey, Iribe and Carmack all know they had binding agreements and admitted so many times, and the fact that Zenimax offered a lot of support to Oculus and never received anything in return is a matter of record.
I'd originally assumed this was simply a matter of big companies arguing about who owns exactly what when an employee does bits of work for different people at different times on similar things. Zenimax seemed to win based on legal technicalities but it was hard to say either side really deserved it based on the general reporting in the media. But looking at the actual details, it seems pretty clear that Luckey and Carmack went out of their way to screw Zenimax over. Carmack in particular may have done some great work in the past, but the fact that he's willing to break multiple contracts, steal from his employer (not just code but physical tools), and then lie about it in court has seriously reduced my respect for him. The fact that the best he can do to defend himself is to rant about a single witness while not even denying the majority of the accusations is just sad.
