I think the title of this article is misleading. This is an agreement between Id and ZeniMax not ZeniMax and Oculus. The implication of the article is that Carmack violated this agreement (he didn't sign this agreement Id's lawyers did) and didn't negotiate an exception for Oculus in the same fashion as he had for Armadillo Aerospace
Edit: For clarification I don't think Oculus "broke" this agreement, perhaps Carmack did though.
The agreement is between ZeniMax/id and Palmer Luckey (id and ZeniMax are functionally the same entity here, so I think you might be confused on that part of it).
Palmer Luckey is the founder of Oculus and for all intents and purposes at the time this was signed, Luckey was Oculus.
I've always hated the notion of "We pay you some small amount to own you 24/7."
In my opinion, what I do outside of work hours is mine and mine alone. I always make sure I state that explicitly and modify any contract that tries to do otherwise.
It's definitely icky. I don't sign those things anymore, but then I don't get paid enough to. I do wonder how these negotiations go though for someone at Carmack's level. These contracts aren't compulsory... Carmack apparently understood that enough to work out an exclusion for Armadillo... and certainly there's a price at which I'd happily sign one of those agreements (though I can't imagine anyone paying it), so it's not clear to me yet which side of this I'd fall on, despite really despising those kinds of employment contracts.
I don't know anything specific about the details of any of Carmack's contracts; but certainly when signing them you have a lot more leverage to carve out exclusions when some other company actively wants to buy "you" and your company than you do later when it is clear to everyone that you're on the way out the door.
Armadillo was started way before ZeniMax acquired id (thus easy to foresee needing a documented exclusion), whereas Oculus VR wasn't even a thing until a few years after that was a done deal.
It goes without saying that you have more leverage before signing a contract than afterward, and the contract is obviously open ended... I was just pointing out that it's a risk of the unknown that would be weighed against compensation by both parties so it's not totally clear to me that Zeni is out of line yet.
I would assume Carmack did the usual programmer thing and just expected them to not be huge unreasonable assholes about future situations after his ZeniMax employment had ended.
This is a common mistake programmers make when dealing with lawyers and other corporate types who stand to gain money from being huge unreasonable assholes.
Right, the way I would read the Armadillo thing isn't as "Carmack knew he needed a documented exclusion clause to work on other stuff," but as "ZeniMax acquired id NOT Armadillo and that made a document setting the exclusion necessary.
Obviously, without seeing Carmack's contract, it's impossible to ascertain if he did agree that all work, in our out of the office, including ideas, belonged to ZeniMax.
And even then, the definition of work product could be argued in all kinds of ways. Is it only committed code, does it also include research and sketches. How does it extend to what is shared with others, etc.
Carmack has a good lawyer, I'm sure. Hopefully that lawyer also looked over his ZeniMax contract.
I nearly turned down my current job because they were using a default contract that had clauses like that in it. It also said that they have control over everything on my computer, despite the fact that the laptop I bring in for work is my own personal laptop.
I ended up spending about an hour with their lawyer reviewing and amending the contract until those kinds of clauses were completely taken out. Lucky the lawyer was very amenable to the changes.
Always read the fine print, and don't sign anything if you're at all uncomfortable with it.
I don't think "work hours" is really an applicable concept for someone in Carmack's position - he's not a 9-to-5 worker, his life and work are surely much more entangled.
It's hard to deny that Carmack's involvement in VR was linked to his position at id (Zenimax by extension) in a way that Armadillo for example was not; if nothing else, he did talk (show?) Rift versions of id properties. However, his image, popularity, visibility and even open promotion of Oculus are not really at issue here, at most they would have been grounds for disciplinary action from Zenimax at the time.
It's up to Zenimax to prove exactly what sort of tangible, protected IP and 'know-how' was transferred to Oculus. During 2012 he tweeted often about his research on lag, and I imagine his work was more extensive than what he publicly disclosed. If there's any link between that work and any properties of Zenimax, say a computer, email address, code or assets owned by Zenimax and used in any way to do VR-related work that Oculus took advantage of (even if it's not in use today), then there will be blood, pain and tears.
Carmack also tweeted and spoke often about Zenimax refusal to touch VR and support Occulus. He basically said Doom 3 BFG Edition VR support was done by him OFF the clock and he would have to buy HIMSELF from his own money all the copies that went with Occulus KS fulfilment.
Basically Zenimax didnt want to do anything with VR while he was there, but now those slimy lawyer cockroaches want piece of the action.
Though I don't know all of the specifics of this case, there is more to consider than whether or not code was used. Certain types of algorithms, concepts, processes, etc. are possibly protectable and could fall under question.
That being said, my sense is that Zenimax is having a bit of regret for not investing early and are trying alternative methods to get "their share".
From a legal perspective, yes, there are more things to consider.
From a common sense perspective, ZeniMax AFAIK wasn't even working on VR at this time period other than Carmack dabbling in his own "free time", so this is a pretty naked attempt for them to make the claim that anything he worked on even remotely related to games is owned by them, which I have a huge issue with (even if it is a concept that holds legal water in some states).
I'd have more sympathy for ZeniMax if they were bullish on VR and Carmack was working on an official project for them in the VR space and then left for another company, but this doesn't look like that at all, this looks like a game company owned by a lawyer trying to get a big payday on an opportunity they previously missed the boat on, using tenuous legal technicalities.
As far as I know He is in Texas (Id is or was in Dallas). Does anyone know which way Texas leans on those issues? Either way DOOM 3 BFG was officially announced to support VR head sets, so he probably has worked with VR in some official capacity.
If Texas leans the wrong way, it must be challenged. It's ridiculous that Zenimax could possibly pull something like this with the full support of the law.
I cannot understand the logic that could make this kind of contract enforceable.
By this reasoning, the patent office employing Albert Einstein owned the theory of Special Relativity and presumably therefore a stake in subsequent commercialised technological development?
It makes me feel physically sick that this is a thing.
I had a probably similar clause in an old contract, anything I built or indeed thought, in or out of work belonged to the company.
> Certain types of algorithms, concepts, processes, etc. are possibly protectable and could fall under question.
Only if they have been explicitly protected. Copyright is the only protection that's automatically granted; patents need to be filed explicitly. If Carmack's claims are correct that none of his work has been patented, and that Oculus didn't use any code that he wrote while in the employ of Id, then he's in the clear and ZeniMax doesn't have a leg to stand on.
No, it doesn't. Under the currently accepted, legally binding definition of Intellectual Property, that category includes far more than just code.
Note, I'm not saying ZeniMax owns a bit of Oculus or their IP. I don't have enough information to speculate meaningfully either way, and neither do you.
A bit confusing, but as near as I can tell, the contention is:
1) Id software claims they own the work Carmack did while working for them unless an exception had been made in his contract.
2) An agreement was signed between Id and Oculus saying Id retained ownership of the work they owned.
This story contains a copy of the agreement, and a quick skim indicates it says what Re/code claims it does. IF Id owned Carmack's work on VR, then it would seem they still do so, and Oculus does not (ie, point 2 is correct).
The question that isn't answered here is, well, does Id own Carmack's work? The fact that Carmack's contract apparently had a specific exclusion for Armadillo Aerospace, but did not have one for Oculus is very suggestive (why negotiate any exceptions unless exceptions are indeed needed?), but not dispositive. Seems like the real dispute is going to end up being between Id and Carmack; Oculus is kind of a bystander.
If I was advising Carmack, I'd strongly suggest he engage a lawyer. He's probably getting legal advice from Oculus's counsel right now, but there's a long, long, LONG history of people getting screwed over by their employer's lawyer (who works for the employer, not for the employee, and has no duty to offer legal advice in the employee's interest!). Tweeting that Oculus doesn't use any code written while Carmack was at Id is all well and good, but it's got nothing to do with the core issue. I'd hate to see Carmack accidentally admit to something that'll screw him over later.
> Tweeting that Oculus doesn't use any code written while Carmack was at Id is all well and good, but it's got nothing to do with the core issue. I'd hate to see Carmack accidentally admit to something that'll screw him over later.
I'm actually kind of shocked that he tweeted anything at all. Wouldn't his lawyer basically tell him not to say anything?
> He's probably getting legal advice from Oculus's counsel right now, but there's a long, long, LONG history of people getting screwed over by their employer's lawyer (who works for the employer, not for the employee, and has no duty to offer legal advice in the employee's interest!).
It's in the employer's best interest to distance Oculus from Carmack.
Let's step back and think about what it is we're all nodding our heads to. If a pioneer like Carmack can be dragged under with a little bit of legal schenanigans, what chance does any of us have?
The core issue is that Carmack wanted to leave Zenimax and do something else. It's about freedom. That freedom is being challenged, and it sounds like everyone here is agreeing that it's sensible for a fellow developer to be denied it.
Read the exact statements carefully. This entire thread is focused on the fact that Oculus's lawyers serve Oculus's best interests, which are not necessarily aligned with Carmack's best interests.
Yeah, you're right. I was just surprised that there wasn't more pushback on this point:
"The question that isn't answered here is, well, does Id own Carmack's work?"
It's up to you how much to disagree with the concept of programmer slavery. Personally, I find it abhorrent that we've allowed the law to evolve into a state to permit it at all. But this is idealism and not pragmatism speaking, and this was a subthread about pragmatism. Sorry.
While I don't support Zenimax's position, I don't buy your argument about programmer slavery either. You could just as easily argue that this was an issue of 'freedom of contract,' wherein any adult person can waive rights in a contract if the person considers it to be in their economic interest. I'm not sure that this particular contract is even valid, but you should acquaint yourself with the idea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_contract
Could we please keep the argument impersonal? Saying something like "you should acquaint yourself with the idea" forces me to either respond "I was in fact already familiar with the idea" or keep silent and let you make presuppositions about what I don't know. The former makes for boring reading; the latter is unfair.
And to the other commenter who has accused me of lacking perspective and being disrespectful: it must be nice having enough money where you're not forced to choose between accepting a contract that strips you of your right to work on what you want in your own free time, or letting your cat die from cancer you can't pay to treat. If that's not some form of slavery, then apparently I do lack perspective. (If there's some confusion as to how this relates to the original topic, it's because the exact same form of law is being applied in both cases: it's considered normal and fair for companies to offer contracts that default to stripping programmers of their right to work on what they want in their free time, and it's up to programmers to be extremely careful not to accidentally sign something that does so. Apparently even Carmack isn't free from this, and that's what prompted my original comment.)
As for the argument, I should choose to bow out rather than write a lengthy expansion of my thoughts, as this is the wrong subthread for it. Maybe I'll post a toplevel comment later if there's sufficient interest, but there are probably more important topics to discuss.
I can only go by what arguments you choose to present. I'm not a big supporter of 'freedom of contract' (as a strategic response to regulation), but it's such an obvious objection to your slavery argument that I was surprised you didn't address it.
As for the more general, companies have interests, just like individuals, and seek to maximize them. Numerous people have pointed out that they are able to negotiate exceptions or get such clauses removed from their employment contracts. I'm sorry about your sick cat, but I also think that economic/contractual negotiations are a fact of life that it's better to prepare for than expect protection from.
I'm sorry about your cat, but taking a job--of your own free will--that results on you not being able to work on your own stuff in exchange for more money than well over ninety percent of humanity makes in a year is so very far from slavery that superlatives fail me. You are equating the life of a pet with the forced bondage of tens of thousands of people today and the historical bondage of millions--and in the process you conflate "it will emotionally hurt me to quit" to "I will be hunted down and forcibly brought back or murdered if I attempt to quit".
You do not have perspective--whether it is overstating the impact of your own situation or perhaps not understanding the extremity of fucking slavery, man--and I think saying so is eminently fair.
a condition compared to that of a slave in respect of exhausting labor or restricted freedom.
I've been using this definition the whole time. I really didn't want to have this debate, but you're hunting me through the comments and forcing me to. How is it disrespectful to use a word in the way that it's defined? I'm genuinely curious and looking to learn.
a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them.
Nothing about a programming job, even with restrictive contract terms, is anywhere close to being considered legal property. It's disrespectful to people affected by real slavery because it draws equivalence between not liking some aspect of a contract freely entered into, with being born into a situation where your children could be taken from you and sold to someone else.
You accused another commenter of aristocratic myopia ("It must be nice to have so much money..." etc). I suggest a bit of introspection is in order before leveling that accusation at others.
With loaded terms, it might be better to define how you're using them up front instead of expecting readers to infer the context. Nobody knew at the outset that you were feeling constrained by medical expenses, for example, and it's not always easy to distinguish between hyperbole and fallacy from short textual comments.
To make the "freedom of contract" argument more concrete - I am shortly leaving my job. One major reason - though not the only one - is that I want to be free to work on projects of my choosing and not have them owned by my employer. The reason I can do this is because I have enough money saved up from several years of service with them to live unemployed for a while. I would not have this money had I not agreed to forfeit my right to own my side-projects for the duration of my employment, because the company would not have found it profitable to employ me if I was just going to burn all my mental energy on my own pet projects.
So giving up the right to own my own work, temporarily, has given the me the economic freedom to concentrate on my own work in the future.
This I think is what the poster meant by "lacking perspective". When you want to change a policy or law, you have to consider all effects of the change, including its effects on other peoples' behavior. And you don't get to reach into somebody else's mind and tell them how they're supposed to act without their consent - that is slavery.
So you have to consider the employer's perspective as well, which is that if you're just going to be working on your own thing, why should we pay you?
What's the alternative that you propose? Do you want the ability to own the stuff you produce on your free time? You already have that ability - you can work as a contractor and set clear limits on the company's ownership of your work-product. I've heard of contractors even maintaining ownership of any frameworks or reusable libraries they build in the course of the job, they just need to negotiate this into the contract. And in order to do that, you need to provide enough value to your client that they don't mind you keeping that ownership, but that's how things work: you don't get things unless you give them.
Yeah, but relationships are often symmetric. Employees rarely have an equal footing when entering a contract. If anyone can achieve equal footing with an employer, it's Carmack, however, he may not have had the degree of privilege that he has today.
This is hyperventilation. There's little reason to hire a programmer--at the rates we get paid, no less, and especially a guy like John Carmack--without being able to leverage their work for competitive advantage. Which, in the games industry, means closed-source software and copyright assignation. And you can not like that all you want, but attempting to equate it to "slavery" is childishly disrespectful to, you know, slaves.
I've made the decision that I won't work for a company with wide assignation of copyright, because I'm not a slave and I have a choice. Get some perspective.
Not to take a side on this (there's bound to be a silly amount of controversy over taking any stand over what is and isn't slavery), but what do you consider slavery? Do you have to be physically forced in to it, or can economic pressures cause slavery? If you consider "right to work" an inalienable right, maybe slavery is a spectrum and any degree of infringement of that right puts you on the spectrum. And no, I obviously wouldn't argue anyone has it as bad as those in physical slavery by any stretch of imagination.
Anyway, take for example the McDonald's employee who has no hireable skills, doesn't make a living wage, and his employer schedules him a) erratically and last-minute so he can't get another job and b) under a certain number of hours so the employee is not full-time and therefore not due benefits. Here, and in the Carmack case, the employer is deliberately taking steps to reduce the employee's ability to work elsewhere or to improve his place in society by work done on personal time. That seems like a pretty significant parallel to slavery, if not a criteria of slavery.
Economic oppression, while certainly a problem, isn't the same thing. And John Carmack--you know, the guy with Ferraris, plural--cannot even claim to be economically oppressed. He is in a better position than almost anybody on the planet to negotiate for himself. (Programmers as a general class are only in a better position than the overwhelming majority of the planet to negotiate for themselves.)
(Also, and this isn't directed at you, but I find it very hard to believe that that post would have been downvoted if slavery was something that afflicted white males. Funny, that.)
Not the OP (and also not taking sides in this), but I consider slavery to be a legal concept. Wikipedia says slavery is "treating people as property that can be bought and sold" and property is itself a legal concept meaning that you have recourse to the state's monopoly on physical force to enforce your right to use an object. So I would consider slavery to be "using the state's monopoly on physical force to enforce dominion over another person".
There are certainly economic situations that I believe are abusive, like debt slavery, indentured servitude, or your McDonald's example. All systems eventually get gamed, and so even when the state says "I'm going to stay out of this, you're free to make contracts but I will not legitimize your power relationships against other people." But there's still a world of difference between "You are property of this plantation owner, if you escape or disobey him you will be hunted down and returned in chains" and "You lack the economic means to support yourself, but you are free to never go to McDonald's again and take your chances living on the street and scrounging up food from trash cans." (I actually think laws that criminalize homelessness are much closer to slavery than minimum-wage jobs.) Many people died for the right to take the latter option, back when "McDonalds" was "plantations".
I agree with you; they let him go and work on other projects and VR/Oculus in particular will benefit themselves - how sick to go after Carmack given the devotion and progress and bottom line dollars he's delivered to them over countless hours of no doubt massive hard work.
I think the law needs to changed such that you can apply a common sense position in every single case. I feel that we should be able to get a fair settlement here and that would be the pay John Carmack earned from Id during his time working at Oculus - not the impossible to calculate contribution he's made to Oculus as a company.
The law does not support me on this because it's a tool of the wealthy and powerful to persecute those with less resources. Terrible.
I in general agree with you. However, if, while employed at company A, I worked for company B (particularly during working hours for A or partially in lieu of working for A), I can't say I'd be surprised if A had a problem with this arrangement. And while gaming and VR aren't exactly the same field, they're pretty damn close.
add to that some butthurt that carmack left id, massively decreasing the value of zenimax' investment
Before joining my current company, I got permission in writing to continue to work and contribute to an open source ml project that doesn't necessarily overlap with the company but is close.
You are right. The biggest pocket book has the biggest chance. Who is that? Zenimax? Facebook? IP claim fights when executives leave is not new in tech.
I find it hard to believe that a successful individual like John Carmack wouldn't already have a lawyer or indeed a whole team of them, and know that lawyers' obligations are to the clients that pay them. This isn't exactly his first rodeo.
More to the point what work are they claiming Oculus has illegally? We know Carmack was involved with Doom 3 BFG which supported Oculus' hardware. Are they claiming Oculus has Doom 3 source when they shouldn't? Carmack's tweet that they don't have any of Id's source makes that seem unlikely.
What I want to know is... what exactly is enforceable, in this specific case?
The reason that I ask is that, Carmack has stated that nothing he has worked on has been patented ("No work I have ever done has been patented." [1]), so, presumably, there is nothing to enforce in that area with regard to code or algorithms.
Also, Carmack has publicly discussed many VR details in technical blog posts and demonstrations, but to my knowledge, we have not seen ZeniMax attempt to prevent these discussions from occurring (i.e., Cease and Desist). Presumably, those details were not viewed as critical to this discussion, but it is an interesting point to note.
I suspect that concepts and processes could be covered under trade secret IP law, but in the case of software in specific, it would seem the safer bet to have patents in place if possible (but again, according to Carmack, he has not worked on patentable work.) The question here is, "If ZeniMax saw potential IP to enforce, then why didn't they attempt to protect it via patents?"
I am officially raising the grellas [2] Bat Signal. I would love to read his thoughts on this topic in general.
No code is a hole large enough to drive a truck through, copyright covers a lot more than just code (for instance, design documents). The code written could easily be a derivative work of something that Id held copyright to.
That will be harder to prove than an outright copyright violation. But if any files made it from Id to Carmacks subsequent employers it is going to be very hairy.
ZeniMax may have found that the IP was already patented by other parties or that they decided they did not wish to patent it. That does not mean they relinquish all their rights.
Yeah, but even copyright on a design document doesn't constitute ownership of an idea. You can produce cliffs notes summarizing or explaining the content of a design document without violating copyright.
Robert Altman (CEO of ZeniMax) is an attorney. He knows they have just enough of a claim to muddy the waters and make life difficult for Oculus. He also knows Oculus is very likely to settle for more than they were offering him previously. This is exactly why people hate lawyers. Robert Altman of ZeniMax is an asshole.
Even if Zenimax is claiming to own John Carmack's work, under what supposition do they make the claim that they own the knowledge in his head. Assuming he did not break a non-comptet e clause, how is it that they can claim that because he gained knowledge of how VR systems work, while working for them that they own that knowledge in his head?
I understand typical IP policies, that they definitely own any code he wrote and are capable of patenting ideas generated by him in that work. This seems to step beyond that however (if indeed he used no code from id software at oculus).
Perhaps I am being naive, but as a software developer, this seems to me that they are attempting to set a dangerously non-competitive precedent. Under this logic, because I learned how to do advanced SQL queries over an internship (assuming a similar IP policy), I could never write SQL for any other company. That is a much simplified analogy and is likely missing some specifics, but I would honestly like to know the basis for this type of lawsuit.
I'd really doubt a non-compete would be applicable in this case. Id has shown no signs of creating a VR headset, which was the reason why Carmack left in the first place.
In California (I have no idea about Texas), if Carmack worked on Occulus in his own time (ie. not at work), on his own equipment with software which was not owned by Id, then they would have absolutely no claim to anything written by him, regardless of whether there was an agreement in place. The code he wrote would be his own. They are, of course, welcome to sue him, but they're most likely going to lose unless they can prove he acted inappropriately. My guess is given Facebook's deep pockets, they're willing to take the risk, but I'm not sure I'd want to be up against that legal team.
This is one area where Texas comes through for employees. Non-competes are almost unenforceable here and if he didn't actually write anything that was used with their equipment or during normal work hours at the office he's likely in good shape.
> In California (I have no idea about Texas), if Carmack worked on Occulus in his own time (ie. not at work), on his own equipment with software which was not owned by Id, then they would have absolutely no claim to anything written by him, regardless of whether there was an agreement in place.
Citation for this? I know California law forbids noncompetes that restrict where you can find employment, but does it invalidate Intellectual property agreements too?
rant
This is a rare glimpse of the true nature of our world.
We really do live in a time when individuals are owned by corporate entities. I cannot express the depth of my anger and revulsion at this horrendous state of affairs.
Yet people talk about it as if it's something that is OK. They talk about it for a few minutes, shrug their collective shoulders and move on. It is not OK, this is not just one of those things.
We seem to believe ourselves in some bright new dawn, an enlightened age full of magic, gods and joyous, eternal, unbroken song.
It is a non-sense that the pitfalls of the past no longer apply.
Do not make believe that things have changed, that the human spirit is no longer corruptible.
I honestly think we need to be mindful of the fanciful seeming visions of some of our finest prophets.
I will leave you with a quote:
"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."
rant
I don't think Oculus/Carmack has too much to worry about, as this agreement looks a bit shaky legally and it will b tricky to prove that Carmack has taken proprietary research with him (unless they have admissions ot this effect that we don't know about).
The reason I think the agreement looks shaky is that it picks Texas law as governing law, but also claims that the term of the agreement shall be 'in perpetuity', ie forever. Texas is one of only 3 US states that still holds to the common law rule against perpetuities, which says that no property interest is valid unless it explicitly vests within 21 years of the death of of the last party involved. [1]
Now this usually comes up in the context of probate law, where people are arguing over the terms of a will involving the disposal of a dead person's property. However, at least one case in New York (which, like Texas, follows the old common-law rule) has seen a similar case involving a software distributorship agreement, in which the court ruled the entire agreement void for lack of an explicit term. [2]
Not a lawyer, not an expert on Texas law, and I only spent 15 minutes on this - but if it ever goes to court, I bet the firs thing that lawyers for Oculus/Carmack would do is move for summary judgment on the basis of contractual invalidity.
Whether or not Carmack did anything wrong is beside the point. It's a long road in court to determining that, and Oculus doesn't want to be spending any time in a law suit when it's trying to close the Facebook deal. This will get a financial settlement quickly quickly so Oculus can get their billion dollar payday, which is what ZeniMax is hoping for.
This jackassery is like if DEC had gone after Microsoft for hiring Dave Cutler et al.
If every company always pursued every technicality allowed by our stupid laws, none of us would be free to change jobs.
edit: Apparently I couldn't have picked a worse example :| However, thinking about the similarities, I'm struck by the sense that these companies are basically seizing on a plausible excuse to extract millions from each other. But these actions diminish the autonomy of these programmers, reducing them to property.
As Steve Yegge says in "Done and Gets Things Smart," Cutler and Carmack are the types of engineers that companies file lawsuits over when they are hired away. This is because they generate a lot of extremely visible value -- most programmers are not perceived by legal departments to be worth suing over like that.
It's absurd that this is even a thing. As far as I'm concerned an employer owns what you do for them, on their time, and with their equipment. Nothing more.
In no other industry can an employer claim ownership over ideas or 'expertise', it's downright medieval and I would expect more from the tech industry.
Regardless of the legal position ZeniMax are being asses.
Unless this gets resolved I shall be avoiding giving them my money in future and encouraging others to do the same to the extent I can be bothered.
69 comments
[ 0.25 ms ] story [ 139 ms ] threadEdit: For clarification I don't think Oculus "broke" this agreement, perhaps Carmack did though.
Palmer Luckey is the founder of Oculus and for all intents and purposes at the time this was signed, Luckey was Oculus.
In my opinion, what I do outside of work hours is mine and mine alone. I always make sure I state that explicitly and modify any contract that tries to do otherwise.
Armadillo was started way before ZeniMax acquired id (thus easy to foresee needing a documented exclusion), whereas Oculus VR wasn't even a thing until a few years after that was a done deal.
This is a common mistake programmers make when dealing with lawyers and other corporate types who stand to gain money from being huge unreasonable assholes.
Obviously, without seeing Carmack's contract, it's impossible to ascertain if he did agree that all work, in our out of the office, including ideas, belonged to ZeniMax.
And even then, the definition of work product could be argued in all kinds of ways. Is it only committed code, does it also include research and sketches. How does it extend to what is shared with others, etc.
Carmack has a good lawyer, I'm sure. Hopefully that lawyer also looked over his ZeniMax contract.
I ended up spending about an hour with their lawyer reviewing and amending the contract until those kinds of clauses were completely taken out. Lucky the lawyer was very amenable to the changes.
Always read the fine print, and don't sign anything if you're at all uncomfortable with it.
I don't think "work hours" is really an applicable concept for someone in Carmack's position - he's not a 9-to-5 worker, his life and work are surely much more entangled.
It's hard to deny that Carmack's involvement in VR was linked to his position at id (Zenimax by extension) in a way that Armadillo for example was not; if nothing else, he did talk (show?) Rift versions of id properties. However, his image, popularity, visibility and even open promotion of Oculus are not really at issue here, at most they would have been grounds for disciplinary action from Zenimax at the time.
It's up to Zenimax to prove exactly what sort of tangible, protected IP and 'know-how' was transferred to Oculus. During 2012 he tweeted often about his research on lag, and I imagine his work was more extensive than what he publicly disclosed. If there's any link between that work and any properties of Zenimax, say a computer, email address, code or assets owned by Zenimax and used in any way to do VR-related work that Oculus took advantage of (even if it's not in use today), then there will be blood, pain and tears.
Basically Zenimax didnt want to do anything with VR while he was there, but now those slimy lawyer cockroaches want piece of the action.
"Oculus uses zero lines of code that I wrote while under contract to Zenimax."
https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/462000400996921344
That being said, my sense is that Zenimax is having a bit of regret for not investing early and are trying alternative methods to get "their share".
From a common sense perspective, ZeniMax AFAIK wasn't even working on VR at this time period other than Carmack dabbling in his own "free time", so this is a pretty naked attempt for them to make the claim that anything he worked on even remotely related to games is owned by them, which I have a huge issue with (even if it is a concept that holds legal water in some states).
I'd have more sympathy for ZeniMax if they were bullish on VR and Carmack was working on an official project for them in the VR space and then left for another company, but this doesn't look like that at all, this looks like a game company owned by a lawyer trying to get a big payday on an opportunity they previously missed the boat on, using tenuous legal technicalities.
By this reasoning, the patent office employing Albert Einstein owned the theory of Special Relativity and presumably therefore a stake in subsequent commercialised technological development?
It makes me feel physically sick that this is a thing.
I had a probably similar clause in an old contract, anything I built or indeed thought, in or out of work belonged to the company.
Only if they have been explicitly protected. Copyright is the only protection that's automatically granted; patents need to be filed explicitly. If Carmack's claims are correct that none of his work has been patented, and that Oculus didn't use any code that he wrote while in the employ of Id, then he's in the clear and ZeniMax doesn't have a leg to stand on.
Note, I'm not saying ZeniMax owns a bit of Oculus or their IP. I don't have enough information to speculate meaningfully either way, and neither do you.
1) Id software claims they own the work Carmack did while working for them unless an exception had been made in his contract.
2) An agreement was signed between Id and Oculus saying Id retained ownership of the work they owned.
This story contains a copy of the agreement, and a quick skim indicates it says what Re/code claims it does. IF Id owned Carmack's work on VR, then it would seem they still do so, and Oculus does not (ie, point 2 is correct).
The question that isn't answered here is, well, does Id own Carmack's work? The fact that Carmack's contract apparently had a specific exclusion for Armadillo Aerospace, but did not have one for Oculus is very suggestive (why negotiate any exceptions unless exceptions are indeed needed?), but not dispositive. Seems like the real dispute is going to end up being between Id and Carmack; Oculus is kind of a bystander.
If I was advising Carmack, I'd strongly suggest he engage a lawyer. He's probably getting legal advice from Oculus's counsel right now, but there's a long, long, LONG history of people getting screwed over by their employer's lawyer (who works for the employer, not for the employee, and has no duty to offer legal advice in the employee's interest!). Tweeting that Oculus doesn't use any code written while Carmack was at Id is all well and good, but it's got nothing to do with the core issue. I'd hate to see Carmack accidentally admit to something that'll screw him over later.
I'm actually kind of shocked that he tweeted anything at all. Wouldn't his lawyer basically tell him not to say anything?
It's in the employer's best interest to distance Oculus from Carmack.
The core issue is that Carmack wanted to leave Zenimax and do something else. It's about freedom. That freedom is being challenged, and it sounds like everyone here is agreeing that it's sensible for a fellow developer to be denied it.
"The question that isn't answered here is, well, does Id own Carmack's work?"
It's up to you how much to disagree with the concept of programmer slavery. Personally, I find it abhorrent that we've allowed the law to evolve into a state to permit it at all. But this is idealism and not pragmatism speaking, and this was a subthread about pragmatism. Sorry.
And to the other commenter who has accused me of lacking perspective and being disrespectful: it must be nice having enough money where you're not forced to choose between accepting a contract that strips you of your right to work on what you want in your own free time, or letting your cat die from cancer you can't pay to treat. If that's not some form of slavery, then apparently I do lack perspective. (If there's some confusion as to how this relates to the original topic, it's because the exact same form of law is being applied in both cases: it's considered normal and fair for companies to offer contracts that default to stripping programmers of their right to work on what they want in their free time, and it's up to programmers to be extremely careful not to accidentally sign something that does so. Apparently even Carmack isn't free from this, and that's what prompted my original comment.)
As for the argument, I should choose to bow out rather than write a lengthy expansion of my thoughts, as this is the wrong subthread for it. Maybe I'll post a toplevel comment later if there's sufficient interest, but there are probably more important topics to discuss.
As for the more general, companies have interests, just like individuals, and seek to maximize them. Numerous people have pointed out that they are able to negotiate exceptions or get such clauses removed from their employment contracts. I'm sorry about your sick cat, but I also think that economic/contractual negotiations are a fact of life that it's better to prepare for than expect protection from.
You do not have perspective--whether it is overstating the impact of your own situation or perhaps not understanding the extremity of fucking slavery, man--and I think saying so is eminently fair.
a condition compared to that of a slave in respect of exhausting labor or restricted freedom.
I've been using this definition the whole time. I really didn't want to have this debate, but you're hunting me through the comments and forcing me to. How is it disrespectful to use a word in the way that it's defined? I'm genuinely curious and looking to learn.
a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them.
Nothing about a programming job, even with restrictive contract terms, is anywhere close to being considered legal property. It's disrespectful to people affected by real slavery because it draws equivalence between not liking some aspect of a contract freely entered into, with being born into a situation where your children could be taken from you and sold to someone else.
You accused another commenter of aristocratic myopia ("It must be nice to have so much money..." etc). I suggest a bit of introspection is in order before leveling that accusation at others.
So giving up the right to own my own work, temporarily, has given the me the economic freedom to concentrate on my own work in the future.
This I think is what the poster meant by "lacking perspective". When you want to change a policy or law, you have to consider all effects of the change, including its effects on other peoples' behavior. And you don't get to reach into somebody else's mind and tell them how they're supposed to act without their consent - that is slavery.
So you have to consider the employer's perspective as well, which is that if you're just going to be working on your own thing, why should we pay you?
What's the alternative that you propose? Do you want the ability to own the stuff you produce on your free time? You already have that ability - you can work as a contractor and set clear limits on the company's ownership of your work-product. I've heard of contractors even maintaining ownership of any frameworks or reusable libraries they build in the course of the job, they just need to negotiate this into the contract. And in order to do that, you need to provide enough value to your client that they don't mind you keeping that ownership, but that's how things work: you don't get things unless you give them.
I've made the decision that I won't work for a company with wide assignation of copyright, because I'm not a slave and I have a choice. Get some perspective.
Anyway, take for example the McDonald's employee who has no hireable skills, doesn't make a living wage, and his employer schedules him a) erratically and last-minute so he can't get another job and b) under a certain number of hours so the employee is not full-time and therefore not due benefits. Here, and in the Carmack case, the employer is deliberately taking steps to reduce the employee's ability to work elsewhere or to improve his place in society by work done on personal time. That seems like a pretty significant parallel to slavery, if not a criteria of slavery.
http://www.antislavery.org/english/slavery_today/what_is_mod...
Economic oppression, while certainly a problem, isn't the same thing. And John Carmack--you know, the guy with Ferraris, plural--cannot even claim to be economically oppressed. He is in a better position than almost anybody on the planet to negotiate for himself. (Programmers as a general class are only in a better position than the overwhelming majority of the planet to negotiate for themselves.)
(Also, and this isn't directed at you, but I find it very hard to believe that that post would have been downvoted if slavery was something that afflicted white males. Funny, that.)
There are certainly economic situations that I believe are abusive, like debt slavery, indentured servitude, or your McDonald's example. All systems eventually get gamed, and so even when the state says "I'm going to stay out of this, you're free to make contracts but I will not legitimize your power relationships against other people." But there's still a world of difference between "You are property of this plantation owner, if you escape or disobey him you will be hunted down and returned in chains" and "You lack the economic means to support yourself, but you are free to never go to McDonald's again and take your chances living on the street and scrounging up food from trash cans." (I actually think laws that criminalize homelessness are much closer to slavery than minimum-wage jobs.) Many people died for the right to take the latter option, back when "McDonalds" was "plantations".
I think the law needs to changed such that you can apply a common sense position in every single case. I feel that we should be able to get a fair settlement here and that would be the pay John Carmack earned from Id during his time working at Oculus - not the impossible to calculate contribution he's made to Oculus as a company.
The law does not support me on this because it's a tool of the wealthy and powerful to persecute those with less resources. Terrible.
I in general agree with you. However, if, while employed at company A, I worked for company B (particularly during working hours for A or partially in lieu of working for A), I can't say I'd be surprised if A had a problem with this arrangement. And while gaming and VR aren't exactly the same field, they're pretty damn close.
add to that some butthurt that carmack left id, massively decreasing the value of zenimax' investment
Before joining my current company, I got permission in writing to continue to work and contribute to an open source ml project that doesn't necessarily overlap with the company but is close.
What I want to know is... what exactly is enforceable, in this specific case?
The reason that I ask is that, Carmack has stated that nothing he has worked on has been patented ("No work I have ever done has been patented." [1]), so, presumably, there is nothing to enforce in that area with regard to code or algorithms.
Also, Carmack has publicly discussed many VR details in technical blog posts and demonstrations, but to my knowledge, we have not seen ZeniMax attempt to prevent these discussions from occurring (i.e., Cease and Desist). Presumably, those details were not viewed as critical to this discussion, but it is an interesting point to note.
I suspect that concepts and processes could be covered under trade secret IP law, but in the case of software in specific, it would seem the safer bet to have patents in place if possible (but again, according to Carmack, he has not worked on patentable work.) The question here is, "If ZeniMax saw potential IP to enforce, then why didn't they attempt to protect it via patents?"
I am officially raising the grellas [2] Bat Signal. I would love to read his thoughts on this topic in general.
[1] https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/461918500307472384
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=grellas
That will be harder to prove than an outright copyright violation. But if any files made it from Id to Carmacks subsequent employers it is going to be very hairy.
ZeniMax may have found that the IP was already patented by other parties or that they decided they did not wish to patent it. That does not mean they relinquish all their rights.
I understand typical IP policies, that they definitely own any code he wrote and are capable of patenting ideas generated by him in that work. This seems to step beyond that however (if indeed he used no code from id software at oculus).
Perhaps I am being naive, but as a software developer, this seems to me that they are attempting to set a dangerously non-competitive precedent. Under this logic, because I learned how to do advanced SQL queries over an internship (assuming a similar IP policy), I could never write SQL for any other company. That is a much simplified analogy and is likely missing some specifics, but I would honestly like to know the basis for this type of lawsuit.
In California (I have no idea about Texas), if Carmack worked on Occulus in his own time (ie. not at work), on his own equipment with software which was not owned by Id, then they would have absolutely no claim to anything written by him, regardless of whether there was an agreement in place. The code he wrote would be his own. They are, of course, welcome to sue him, but they're most likely going to lose unless they can prove he acted inappropriately. My guess is given Facebook's deep pockets, they're willing to take the risk, but I'm not sure I'd want to be up against that legal team.
Citation for this? I know California law forbids noncompetes that restrict where you can find employment, but does it invalidate Intellectual property agreements too?
EDIT: Nevermind, found it and you are right. LABOR CODE, SECTION 2870-2872 http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=lab&gr...
There is an exception for works that "Relate [...] to the employer's business". That's probably what the lawsuit will hinge on.
rant This is a rare glimpse of the true nature of our world. We really do live in a time when individuals are owned by corporate entities. I cannot express the depth of my anger and revulsion at this horrendous state of affairs. Yet people talk about it as if it's something that is OK. They talk about it for a few minutes, shrug their collective shoulders and move on. It is not OK, this is not just one of those things. We seem to believe ourselves in some bright new dawn, an enlightened age full of magic, gods and joyous, eternal, unbroken song. It is a non-sense that the pitfalls of the past no longer apply. Do not make believe that things have changed, that the human spirit is no longer corruptible. I honestly think we need to be mindful of the fanciful seeming visions of some of our finest prophets. I will leave you with a quote: "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." rant
The reason I think the agreement looks shaky is that it picks Texas law as governing law, but also claims that the term of the agreement shall be 'in perpetuity', ie forever. Texas is one of only 3 US states that still holds to the common law rule against perpetuities, which says that no property interest is valid unless it explicitly vests within 21 years of the death of of the last party involved. [1]
Now this usually comes up in the context of probate law, where people are arguing over the terms of a will involving the disposal of a dead person's property. However, at least one case in New York (which, like Texas, follows the old common-law rule) has seen a similar case involving a software distributorship agreement, in which the court ruled the entire agreement void for lack of an explicit term. [2]
1. http://www.actec.org/public/documents/studies/zaritsky_rap_s...
2. http://blog.internetcases.com/2008/07/02/software-distributo...
Not a lawyer, not an expert on Texas law, and I only spent 15 minutes on this - but if it ever goes to court, I bet the firs thing that lawyers for Oculus/Carmack would do is move for summary judgment on the basis of contractual invalidity.
If every company always pursued every technicality allowed by our stupid laws, none of us would be free to change jobs.
edit: Apparently I couldn't have picked a worse example :| However, thinking about the similarities, I'm struck by the sense that these companies are basically seizing on a plausible excuse to extract millions from each other. But these actions diminish the autonomy of these programmers, reducing them to property.
As Steve Yegge says in "Done and Gets Things Smart," Cutler and Carmack are the types of engineers that companies file lawsuits over when they are hired away. This is because they generate a lot of extremely visible value -- most programmers are not perceived by legal departments to be worth suing over like that.
In no other industry can an employer claim ownership over ideas or 'expertise', it's downright medieval and I would expect more from the tech industry.