[angersock]

So, there's a whole host of problems with this line of reasoning.

What we do as engineers, especially in software development, shouldn't be treated with the same reasoning as you'd seen in an assembly line.

First, note that Carmack was a cofounder of id; a good chunk of his precedent and history was doing exactly this sort of research work. Does Zenimax want to go back and claim ownership of his contributions to graphics cards manufacturers for his help with their drivers and APIs?

Second, note that at a high level, it simply doesn't make sense to have an engineer not working on R&D in fields outside of what the current core line of business is. Especially in a AAA studio, a lot of that work is either art or scripting or quashing bugs--a workload which is honestly a total waste of senior engineer talent. They enjoyed the fruits of this labor; consider the extra sales of Doom 3 BFG whose improvements were driven partially by this work with Oculus.

Third, Zenimax wasn't and isn't in the business of making hardware, and only now seemed to give a shit following the Facebook acquisition. This is so transparently a cash-grab that I'm kind of surprised you are being generous at all on this.

~

Look, I don't know about you, but I'd rather not live in a world where my employer effectively owns everything I do while drawing a salary there, and can make a claim on everything I work on hence, regardless of whether it makes any logical sense or not.

Further, I don't think it's good that you can spend twenty years building a business (industry, more honestly) and then have some asshole suits screw you out of what should by right be a fun working semi-retirement. It's like spitting in the face of engineering's American Dream.

[DerpDerpDerp]

ZeniMax was working on VR technologies before Carmack began interacting with Oculus, and has a reasonable claim to the fruits of his work on that (being that it was an assigned R&D project).

Do you really think I should (for example) be allowed to develop a new plastic in an R&D position as part of my duties at a chemical company, and then simply give the research over to a competitor because it strikes my fancy?

If Carmack wanted to retain control over his IP, or not work under the (pretty reasonable) IP assignment clause, he should have not sold the company or not stayed working there.

The fact is ZeniMax has several good claims: Oculus used id IP to promote their product (games), used products of id's (under ZeniMax) research in to VR, and so on.

[anigbrowl]

First, note that Carmack was a cofounder of id; a good chunk of his precedent and history was doing exactly this sort of research work.

Which was (part of) the portfolio Zenimax was buying into when they acquired id. Zenimax spent about $105 million on that deal, of which Carmack presumably received a large chunk as a co-owner of the company. They put down fat money to own id and the IP that came out there.

Further, I don't think it's good that you can spend twenty years building a business (industry, more honestly) and then have some asshole suits screw you out of what should by right be a fun working semi-retirement. It's like spitting in the face of engineering's American Dream.

How are they screwing him? He could have just quit ID and gone to work on Oculus once he decided that that was the most exciting thing, it's not like he was depending on a biweekly paycheck from Zenimax to keep a roof over his head and put diapers on the baby. Nobody forced him to sell id to ZeniMax, I presume he and his partners did so because they all got very rich in the process.