Facebook Ordered to Pay $500M in Oculus Lawsuit

Post by erikpukinskis » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 5:10 AM UTC

daenz wrote: post #55

aresant wrote: post #44

If the original complaint is to be believed(1) - which Juror's found credible -the course of events, tldr was something like this: - Zenimax bought ID software for >$100m(1) on June 24, 2009. - Carmack signed up with Zenimax for an earn-out / golden-handcuffs agreement that ended in June of 2013. - Carmack was enthralled with VR. - Carmack found Palmer via an internet forum, reached out to get a rift to try. - Carmac…

What in the world was Carmack doing, working on another company's project, using your current company's time and resources? Don't get me wrong, the guy is a genius, and I love nearly everything he has a hand in, but you would think that with his level of seniority, some alarm bells would have gone off in his head.

Post by abandonliberty » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 5:34 AM UTC

rasz_pl wrote: post #112

abandonliberty wrote: post #54

Can anyone find a copy of the NDA that was violated?

its under NDA

Post by taneq » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 5:59 AM UTC

dkonofalski wrote: post #7

cptskippy wrote: post #3

The accusation that Palmer was incapable of creating the Rift without Carmack's help and that he had a barely functional prototype, if true, is pretty insulting to Carmack. Carmack is a smart guy and I every much doubt he'd have joined on at CTO if the prototype was as awful as ZeniMax says it was.

I don't think it was the prototype itself that was barely functioning, it was the software side that wasn't great. I remember when Palmer first showed off the device, it seemed to track just fine. When they introduced actual content, though, it became disorienting really quickly. I backed them on Kickstarter so I got to see the DevKit1, DK2, and the CV1. The difference between the early versions and the end versions…

Post by swang » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 6:03 AM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #122

Jerry2 wrote: post #101

This is a very interesting part: [0] >The liability of Defendants was established by uncontradicted evidence presented by ZeniMax, including (i) the breakthrough in VR technology occurred in March 2012 at id Software through the research efforts of our former employee John Carmack (work that ZeniMax owns) before we ever had contact with the other defendants; (ii) we shared this VR technology with the defendants under…

Evidence destruction aside, The idea of Zenimax preventing Carmack from accessing the id tech 5 source code is heartbreaking to me. That's like cutting out a part of someone's brain. The free software third wave can't come soon enough.

Post by donatj » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 6:44 AM UTC

taneq wrote: post #124

MitchellKnight wrote: post #4

> However, the jury also found Wednesday that Oculus didn’t violate any trade secrets. Instead, it ruled that Luckey, who was working as a contractor for Zenimax before starting the Kickstarter for the Oculus Rift headset, violated his non-disclosure agreement, according to a Polygon report. I don't understand how this works. Why does Facebook have to pay $500M over an NDA violation between an individual and his prev…

If Alice hires Bob, and Bob sells Alice's information to Charlie, and Charlie makes $2bn out of it, then it seems fair to hold Charlie responsible as well. Otherwise all you're doing is creating a market for sacrificial goats to take the fall while the company making the money gets away clean.