{"id":533,"date":"2017-02-02T08:41:23","date_gmt":"2017-02-02T08:41:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ashwinl.com\/ideas\/facebook-ordered-to-pay-500m-in-oculus-lawsuit\/"},"modified":"2017-02-02T08:41:23","modified_gmt":"2017-02-02T08:41:23","slug":"facebook-ordered-to-pay-500m-in-oculus-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ashwinl.com\/ideas\/facebook-ordered-to-pay-500m-in-oculus-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook Ordered to Pay $500M in Oculus Lawsuit | Hacker News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Facebook Ordered to Pay $500M in Oculus Lawsuit | Hacker News<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Good summary:<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/p>\n

If the original complaint is to be believed(1) – which Juror’s found credible -the course of events, tldr was something like this:<\/p>\n

– Zenimax bought ID software for >$100m(1) on June 24, 2009.<\/p>\n

– Carmack signed up with Zenimax for an earn-out \/ golden-handcuffs agreement that ended in June of 2013.<\/p>\n

– Carmack was enthralled with VR.<\/p>\n

– Carmack found Palmer via an internet forum, reached out to get a rift to try.<\/p>\n

– Carmack tinkered with the Rift, adding sensors, building calibration, etc. while on the clock \/ using hardware from zenimax.<\/p>\n

– Carmack brought a prototype of the Rift working on Doom 3 to E3 with him providing Oculus with their early press.<\/p>\n

– Zenimax realized the extent to which Carmack was enabling Oculus and worked to negotiate equity with Brendan Iribe.<\/p>\n

– Oculus sent Zenimax a proposal to discuss a partnership Sept 21, 2012 but never followed up \/ followed through.<\/p>\n

– Carmack quit Zenimax the day his contract was up in June 2013, joined Oculus as CTO a few months later and took his 5 best guys with him.<\/p>\n

– FB bought Oculus March 2014, Zenmix got pissed and sued.<\/p>\n

Clearly it’s Carmack’s genius that made this viable.<\/p>\n

It’s Carmack’s video that lent credibility to the campaign.<\/p>\n

And it’s Carmack’s original IP (Doom) that made the demos compelling.<\/p>\n

It may be a weird system that Zenimax is entitled to $500m but since Carmack was an employee, under contract with Zenimax – who had paid >$100m to buy him \/ his IP – it sounds like this was a fair verdict.<\/p>\n

(1) https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/document\/274211118\/Judge-denies-Faceb…<\/a><\/p>\n

(2) http:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/articles\/zenimax-raised-105-million-…<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Facebook Ordered to Pay $500M in Oculus Lawsuit | Hacker News Good summary: \u201c 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","category-uncategorized","post_format-post-format-link"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ashwinl.com\/ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ashwinl.com\/ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ashwinl.com\/ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ashwinl.com\/ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ashwinl.com\/ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ashwinl.com\/ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ashwinl.com\/ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ashwinl.com\/ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ashwinl.com\/ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}