Zenimax vs Oculus Lawsuit

[Ike Turner]

Zenimax still hasn't paid for the purchase of iD Software? How is that even a thing?

Regards,
SB

They allegedly already paid for most of it but one payement remains unpaid to Carmack. I wouldn't be surprised if Zenimax decided to halt the payements when the whole thing went down (discovering that Carmarck stole/copied all that stuff when he quit to Oculus) which is normal in such cases to wait until the trial is done. Now that it's finished (well not really because Zenimax filled an injunction afterwards) and Zenimax is probably taking its sweet time to act on this matter thus Carmack is now filling his suit (I guess that he would have done it earlier if he wasn't accused to stealing his employer..).

 

[manux]

Zenimax vs oculus law suite seems to have reached conclusion. I wonder if this settles everything or if for example carmack's case is still in process?

The $500 million a court ordered Oculus owner Facebook to pay ZeniMax Media last year has been halved to $250 million in a new ruling.

A US judge also this week rejected ZeniMax’s request to have sales of the Oculus Rift banned, Bloomberg reports.

https://uploadvr.com/facebooks-zenimax-lawsuit-payout-halved-to-250-million/

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Regardless of how facebook's lawyers want to spin it, It's still a ruling that declares Oculus/Facebook as guilty.

I wouldn't be surprised if the biggest factor for bringing the payment down was a slower than expected adoption rate for VR in general.

 

[Malo]

I wouldn't be surprised if the biggest factor for bringing the payment down was a slower than expected adoption rate for VR in general.

I guess this doesn't help either, losing 250m just like that.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I guess this doesn't help either, losing 250m just like that.

Facebook posted yearly profits of close to $16B during 2017, so I think they'll survive a $250M fine.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

It's still not over. Facebook is going to appeal the ruling. The judge also threw out yet another claim by Bethesda, so Bethesda's original lawsuit is now but a shadow of what they tried to sue Facebook for.

In the original ruling the Jury determined that Facebook was innocent of stealing trade secrets. That was the big one that Zenimax was hoping for and was key to their whole lawsuit.

The original 500 million USD ruling was only for violation of NDA and lying. That's what the current verdict reduces as the judge states that Bethesda hasn't presented enough evidence to determine damages suffered.

Damages for the original verdict.

• 200 million USD for violating NDA contract.
• 50 million USD for copyright infringement
• 50 million USD for false designation (Oculus)
• 150 million USD for false designation (Brendan Iribe)
• 50 million USD for false designation (Palmer Luckey)
• Opened potential for Zenimax to have sales of Oculus Rift blocked.

Damages after current verdict.

• 200 million USD for violating NDA contract.
• 50 million USD for copyright infringement.

The current verdict also denies the sales injunction that Zenimax was seeking.

So, from the original over 4 billion USD lawsuit that Zenimax brought to court, they are now down to 250 million USD.

Looking back over the original Jury Verdict papers

https://www.scribd.com/document/338147994/Ruling-in-Zenimax-vs-Facebook-s-Oculus

Interesting how many of the claims Zenimax made that the Jury threw out.

Regards,
SB

 

[manux]

Zenimax and by implication also bethesda lost me when they sued carmack and oculus for vr stuff. It would be one thing if zenimax was doing vr headsets/invest in vr. The whole thing was just an attempt for giant money grab from zenimax. Btw. Carmack won his case in the end and zenimax actually ended up having to pay carmack(for some earlier id software acquisition stuff zenimax had tried not to pay). Zenimax vs. Oculus I don't remember who paid and what.

Not going to support anything from zenimax and means I won't support bethesda either.

edit. The decision from zenimax vs. vr.

Decision
The jury trial completed on February 2, 2017, with the jury finding that Luckey had violated the NDA he had with ZeniMax, and awarding $500 million to ZeniMax.[15][16] However, the jury found that Oculus, Facebook, Luckey, Iribe, and Carmack did not misappropriate or steal trade secrets,[15][16][17] though ZeniMax continued to publicly assert otherwise.[18] Oculus will have to pay $200 million for breaking the non-disclosure agreement, and additional $50 million for copyright infringement; for false designation of origin charges, Oculus and Luckey will have to pay $50 million each, while Iribe will be responsible for $150 million

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZeniMax_v._Oculus

 

[manux]

This really summarizes the zenimax attitude well. From the wiki page from previous post. Good luck for any developer who has ever written a for loop or any kind of getFoo, setFoo api.

Carmack took issue with one of ZeniMax's expert witnesses who testified that non-literal copying, the act of creating a program with similar functions but using different computer code, constitutes a copyright violation.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

edit. The decision from zenimax vs. vr.

That decision seems to only find legal fault with Occulus and Facebook. I.e. all the costs were awarded to the plaintive form the defendants. Zenimax made some claims that aren't true but is that a crime? If so, every marketing person in the consumer industry would be in jail.

 

[manux]

That decision seems to only find legal fault with Occulus and Facebook. I.e. all the costs were awarded to the plaintive form the defendants. Zenimax made some claims that aren't true but is that a crime? If so, every marketing person in the consumer industry would be in jail.

you have to follow it from start and also what zenimax said in the end. Zenimax was asking for multiple billions of dollars.

I would have absolutely no gripe against zenimax if they had invested into vr heavily and oculus somehow took advantage. But zenimax has done almost zero for vr and is making money through harassing people(carmack)and companies who are doing hard work.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

you have to follow it from start and also what zenimax said in the end. Zenimax was asking for multiple billions of dollars.

Of course it is, that's always going to be your opening gambit.

I would have absolutely no gripe against zenimax if they had invested into vr heavily and oculus somehow took advantage. But zenimax has done almost zero for vr and is making money through harassing people(carmack)and companies who are doing hard work.

So why were all the monetary penalties awarded to Zenimax. If Occulus/Facebook were innocent, why'd they end us having to pay a bunch of money?

 

[manux]

Of course it is, that's always going to be your opening gambit.



So why were all the monetary penalties awarded to Zenimax. If Occulus/Facebook were innocent, why'd they end us having to pay a bunch of money?


I'm giving examples of things I am not aware other engines do.


But the engine is more than just graphics. It's got to handle assets, data, AI, scripting, world generation. There are all things that Bethesda have built into CreationKit. Is it perfect? Hell no. Should they burn it down and start again? Probably not.

The engine was a janky mess on PC and last generation consoles, just look at Fallout 3, New Vegas, Skyrim. Now look at the engine driving Fallout 4, 76 and Skyrim SE. It's the same engine with considerable less jank.

The law suit wasn't about games or game engines. It was about fundamental algorithms needed to make vr work like how the warping image was done to account for the optics in vr headset. I believe they also tried to claim somehow the headset made by palmer luckey in his garage infringed with the non existent zenimax vr headset(they never made one).

Basically all their fundamental claims were against carmack. They claimed carmack stole zenimax IP and did all kinds of awfull things. In the end carmack did not have to pay any compensation. On the contrary, Carmack counter sued zenimax for not honoring their deal when they bought id software. This ended up into settlement where zenimax paid to carmack. Carmack was freed of any wrong doing afaik.

You might want to read through this: https://www.businessinsider.com/fac...d-heres-what-zenimax-had-to-say-at-the-time-6

The other folks I'm not so sure what they did. But it's far cry what they had to pay compared to the original 2billion dollars zenimax was asking.

My view is that zenimax saw carmack leave for oculus and then facebook buy oculus. This left an opening for zenimax to try to extort money out of then still born vr industry. I don't like this type of business tactics. I'm all for protecting your own ip. But zenimax contributed zero towards from what they tried to extract money out of.

The proof how much damage zenimax endured is in the pudding. Let's list all the vr hw zenimax has done? None? How about games? Not anything significant. If zenimax really had worked on vr seriously there would be more out from them. And this is especially true in the context of the middleware and drivers carmack was working on at oculus. Carmack didn't work on games, he worked on low level stuff needed to make vr work.

And when some company tries tactics like this it makes me cringe. Good luck to any software engineer if claim below from zenimax had stick against carmack(it didn't). If attempt below had sticked it would have basically given zenimax equivalent of a patent over image warping for optics and any company trying to do vr would have had to pay royalties to zenimax. No matter the implementation the idea of image warping would have been owned by zenimax. And what if we continue this logic to for loop, declaring variable, making any kind of api,...

ZeniMax's expert witnesses who testified that non-literal copying, the act of creating a program with similar functions but using different computer code, constitutes a copyright violation.

In my book zenimax did a greedy moneygrab attempt as they knew facebook has money. It's not necessarily illegal or wrong what they did but my morals will not allow me support company trying these types of tactics. Your morals or view what zenimax did might be different than mine. And that's fine. I'm not asking anyone else to boycott zenimax.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

The law suit wasn't about games or game engines. It was about fundamental algorithms needed to make vr work like how the warping image was done to account for the optics in vr headset.

I'm definitely not interested in the situation enough to do a ton of reading about it, my post was only querying why you felt aggrieved against Bethesda when quoting a court decision that awards costs to Bethesda, which implied wrong-doing on the part of the other parties, i.e. FaceBook/Oculus.

I still don't understand but I'm moving on.