11 ms·

Can someone explain why companies would do that? Is there really some good reason, if only from a business perspective, to do this?

Arcsech 10y ago
If you don't enforce your copyright or trademark, you lose it. That's likely what this is: Some lawyer saw that DoomRL was using Zenimax property and got all excited about it.
- CM30 10y ago
  Only trademark. Copyrights aren't lost by not defending them (this is a very common misconception for some reason).
  - Hemospectrum 10y ago
    > this is a very common misconception for some reason The use of the umbrella term "intellectual property" is a deliberate tactic to seed that type of misinformation in public discourse, so that people will assume these different concepts are equivalent and that protections applying to one of them apply to all of them. You're seeing cases where this tactic has succeeded.
    - rpdillon 10y ago
      Richard Stallman rejects the term 'intellectual property' for exactly this reason. It's another case where Stallman can seem extreme, but is actually quite insightful. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html
kbenson 10y ago
To keep it from turning into a generic trademark[1], I would guess. Aspirin is the classic case of this that I know of. It's the same reason Coca Cola sends representatives to restaurants and when they ask for a coke they make sure you actually bring a coke, or ask if Pepsi is okay if that's what they have. If Coke becomes generic for Cola, then they can lose their right to enforce their trademark. As an example of this happening, apparently in some areas of the US Coke is generic for soda/pop, not just Cola, and it's not not unheard of for someone to ask for a Coke, and when prompted for what type, respond with Sprite. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark
- baq 10y ago
  xerox and escalator are good examples, too.
  - TrevorJ 10y ago
    Related to the first, a dramatic (and hilarious) reinactment of actual deposition transcripts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZbqAMEwtOE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZbqAMEwtOE
- rpdillon 10y ago
  Completely agree with your point. One nit: > If Coke becomes generic for Cola, then they can lose their right to enforce their copyright. That should say 'trademark' rather than 'copyright'. Copyright and patents don't become less enforceable if they are selectively enforced. The same is not true for trademarks.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    Corrected, thanks! They occupy a similar place in my mind, and while I purposefully and deliberately made an effort to use the correct one initially, I accidentally regressed later...
- pault 10y ago
  I grew up in one of those regions and was flabbergasted when, at the age of 8 or so, I moved to Seattle and asked for a coke and they gave me a Coke without asking what kind of coke I wanted (Dr. Pepper of course). I then proceeded to protest to a very confused clerk that I wanted a Dr. Pepper coke, not a Coke coke.
- zem 10y ago
  what can coke even do if the restaurant brings you a generic cola? seems like the wrong level at which to be fighting this battle.
  - kbenson 10y ago
CM30 10y ago
Well, I heard part of it is more a company issue with John Carmack (who supported the game's spiritual successor on Twitter) than a business one. After all, the same ZeniMax also supported Brutal Doom (a Doom mod) for the Game Awards and was fine with numerous other Doom fan projects. And this game itself has been going fine for about 10 years. They'll say it's an IP ownership thing, but a lot of people are more convinced it's a personal grudge thing.
- AJ007 10y ago
  For reference: http://www.pcgamer.com/zenimax-accuses-john-carmack-of-theft-in-amended-oculus-rift-lawsuit-filing/ http://www.pcgamer.com/zenimax-accuses-john-carmack-of-theft...
  - cr0sh 10y ago
    I wasn't sure that this was still going on - sadly I guess it is. I find zenimax's claims that Palmer didn't invent anything to be spurious at best; I was following what Palmer was doing on the MTBS3D forums for a couple of years before the Kickstarter was launched. He's been hacking on this tech for a long time. He was taking old-school HMDs from the 1990s and upgrading them, experimenting with optics and displays - ultimately perfecting them into what would become the prototype of the Rift. I've played around with DIY VR since the early 1990s - and I've collected many of the same HMDs Palmer was experimenting with. I've got a few hacked power gloves (sadly, I don't have a Menelli box - but the parallel port hack works great; there's even a linux driver, now), some old VFX-1 HMDs, a Cybermaxx, etc. I even have a complete set of the PCVR magazine before it folded. I played with REND386 and AVRIL back in the day. I even got some crap working on my Amiga 1200 (using AMOS 3D). In short - I knew when I saw what Palmer was up to, that he was the "real deal", and that of anyone, he had the best chance of bringing VR into a "second revival" - which is why I backed the Kickstarter. I may not agree with what has happened post FB money (I'm really disappointed that official linux driver support has been relegated to the bin of history), but I still believe the company to be legit when it comes to the claim of invention. For zenimax to say that Palmer couldn't have invented this stuff in his "garage" is pure rubbish - many people in the 1990s were hacking VR in their garages, on their kitchen tables, and at the PCs in their bedrooms. You had to, if you wanted inexpensive VR. Furthermore, it doesn't take much to plop a couple of cheap fresnel lenses in front of a couple of old Casio portable pocket TVs to get up-and-running. PCVR and Presence magazine both had articles on how to configure optics and build homebrew HMDs; the tech isn't exactly rocket science. Where Palmer got lucky (no pun intended) was being at the right place, at the right time, and being one of the few people in the world at the time still experimenting around with low-cost homebrew VR (compared to the 1990s, there were only a handful in the world doing it post-2010). The tech finally came around (because of smartphones) for low-cost, high-resolution, small, lightweight LCDs - the kind of display we could only dream about back in the 1990s. He was positioned perfectly to take advantage of this - and he did. The rest is history.

Arcsech 10y ago

If you don't enforce your copyright or trademark, you lose it. That's likely what this is: Some lawyer saw that DoomRL was using Zenimax property and got all excited about it.

CM30 10y ago
Only trademark. Copyrights aren't lost by not defending them (this is a very common misconception for some reason).
- Hemospectrum 10y ago
  > this is a very common misconception for some reason The use of the umbrella term "intellectual property" is a deliberate tactic to seed that type of misinformation in public discourse, so that people will assume these different concepts are equivalent and that protections applying to one of them apply to all of them. You're seeing cases where this tactic has succeeded.
  - rpdillon 10y ago
    Richard Stallman rejects the term 'intellectual property' for exactly this reason. It's another case where Stallman can seem extreme, but is actually quite insightful. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html

kbenson 10y ago

To keep it from turning into a generic trademark[1], I would guess. Aspirin is the classic case of this that I know of. It's the same reason Coca Cola sends representatives to restaurants and when they ask for a coke they make sure you actually bring a coke, or ask if Pepsi is okay if that's what they have. If Coke becomes generic for Cola, then they can lose their right to enforce their trademark. As an example of this happening, apparently in some areas of the US Coke is generic for soda/pop, not just Cola, and it's not not unheard of for someone to ask for a Coke, and when prompted for what type, respond with Sprite. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark

baq 10y ago
xerox and escalator are good examples, too.
- TrevorJ 10y ago
  Related to the first, a dramatic (and hilarious) reinactment of actual deposition transcripts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZbqAMEwtOE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZbqAMEwtOE
rpdillon 10y ago
Completely agree with your point. One nit: > If Coke becomes generic for Cola, then they can lose their right to enforce their copyright. That should say 'trademark' rather than 'copyright'. Copyright and patents don't become less enforceable if they are selectively enforced. The same is not true for trademarks.
- kbenson 10y ago
  Corrected, thanks! They occupy a similar place in my mind, and while I purposefully and deliberately made an effort to use the correct one initially, I accidentally regressed later...
pault 10y ago
I grew up in one of those regions and was flabbergasted when, at the age of 8 or so, I moved to Seattle and asked for a coke and they gave me a Coke without asking what kind of coke I wanted (Dr. Pepper of course). I then proceeded to protest to a very confused clerk that I wanted a Dr. Pepper coke, not a Coke coke.
zem 10y ago
what can coke even do if the restaurant brings you a generic cola? seems like the wrong level at which to be fighting this battle.
- kbenson 10y ago

CM30 10y ago

Well, I heard part of it is more a company issue with John Carmack (who supported the game's spiritual successor on Twitter) than a business one. After all, the same ZeniMax also supported Brutal Doom (a Doom mod) for the Game Awards and was fine with numerous other Doom fan projects. And this game itself has been going fine for about 10 years. They'll say it's an IP ownership thing, but a lot of people are more convinced it's a personal grudge thing.

AJ007 10y ago
For reference: http://www.pcgamer.com/zenimax-accuses-john-carmack-of-theft-in-amended-oculus-rift-lawsuit-filing/ http://www.pcgamer.com/zenimax-accuses-john-carmack-of-theft...
- cr0sh 10y ago
  I wasn't sure that this was still going on - sadly I guess it is. I find zenimax's claims that Palmer didn't invent anything to be spurious at best; I was following what Palmer was doing on the MTBS3D forums for a couple of years before the Kickstarter was launched. He's been hacking on this tech for a long time. He was taking old-school HMDs from the 1990s and upgrading them, experimenting with optics and displays - ultimately perfecting them into what would become the prototype of the Rift. I've played around with DIY VR since the early 1990s - and I've collected many of the same HMDs Palmer was experimenting with. I've got a few hacked power gloves (sadly, I don't have a Menelli box - but the parallel port hack works great; there's even a linux driver, now), some old VFX-1 HMDs, a Cybermaxx, etc. I even have a complete set of the PCVR magazine before it folded. I played with REND386 and AVRIL back in the day. I even got some crap working on my Amiga 1200 (using AMOS 3D). In short - I knew when I saw what Palmer was up to, that he was the "real deal", and that of anyone, he had the best chance of bringing VR into a "second revival" - which is why I backed the Kickstarter. I may not agree with what has happened post FB money (I'm really disappointed that official linux driver support has been relegated to the bin of history), but I still believe the company to be legit when it comes to the claim of invention. For zenimax to say that Palmer couldn't have invented this stuff in his "garage" is pure rubbish - many people in the 1990s were hacking VR in their garages, on their kitchen tables, and at the PCs in their bedrooms. You had to, if you wanted inexpensive VR. Furthermore, it doesn't take much to plop a couple of cheap fresnel lenses in front of a couple of old Casio portable pocket TVs to get up-and-running. PCVR and Presence magazine both had articles on how to configure optics and build homebrew HMDs; the tech isn't exactly rocket science. Where Palmer got lucky (no pun intended) was being at the right place, at the right time, and being one of the few people in the world at the time still experimenting around with low-cost homebrew VR (compared to the 1990s, there were only a handful in the world doing it post-2010). The tech finally came around (because of smartphones) for low-cost, high-resolution, small, lightweight LCDs - the kind of display we could only dream about back in the 1990s. He was positioned perfectly to take advantage of this - and he did. The rest is history.