I've typed and erased this response 3 times because I tend to wander, but the I think what irks me the most about things like this is that they will end up concentrating on some physical object, like some code that he created in his spare time while still under their employment.
They won't even acknowledge the fact that this is a titan of productivity and a genius programmer who could probably conjure up anything he's written in the past N decades given an afternoon.
I came in here to post this exact quote. This is just super ridiculous. Any learning you did while employed is property of that employer. I seriously hope there no one comes up with a device that makes that possible to enforce.
Now I want to read a dystopian transhumanist novel where mind uploading is commonplace, but corporations force you to checkout a new "branch" of your mind-state while working for them, enforcing a rollback to a pre-employment commit after terminating employment.
I'm surprised they employed him at all, if that's their attitude.
If they expect "the proprietary ... know-how" and experience of all employees to remain confidential, then surely they can't have expected him to use any of the knowledge he gained working anywhere else previously, when he started working for them.
If that's the case, employing Carmack gains you nothing over employing a fresh new graduate, except that it costs a heck of a lot more.
Or are they just another bunch of fucking hypocrites?
Why would you assume Carmack did everything he gave to Zenimax in his time off?
It seems a lot more likely to me that he felt he was entitled to spend his time however he saw fit and did the VR work during work hours. I doubt if it would have even occurred to him to differentiate between "work time" and "time off".
People sign work for hire agreements all the time that grant ownership of everything to their employer. I cannot speak to the enforcement of these agreements, but they are common.
I wonder if they made him sign an employment agreement as a condition of their acquisition. It's common for these agreements to confer all rights in anything developed or conceived, on the clock or off, with or without employer resources, regardless of subject matter, to the employer. These provisions vary in their enforce-ability by state. Generally, if the IP relates to your job function, even tangentially, it can cause a lot of grief.
1) He refused John Carmack's pitch for a new project. Stupid.
2) That got his best employee to quit the company and start a new one. Double stupid.
3) That new company he has no rights to was worth $2 billion a year and a half later. Management-level stupid. (note I don't care what it's "value" is, someone paid 2 billion for it, that makes it worth 2 billion)
And now of course, the lawyer wants some money. It isn't fair that something I could have had but didn't want was sold for $2 billion ! Obviously they owe me for the idea !
I have a 2 year old daughter that has this sort of behaviour too. I also have a 5 year old daughter, who has grown out of it (that wasn't easy, let me tell you). I'd expect the CEO of a legal company to ...
Dammit I almost got through that last sentence without laughing ... and crying.
> The proprietary ... know-how Mr. Carmack developed when he was a ZeniMax employee ... are owned by ZeniMax.