I was expecting Carmack's name to appear in the press release. I cannot say I'm disappointed after reading the complaint.
The whole piece reads as if ZeniMax felt that it has somehow acquired possession of Carmack's knowledge (or any other of its employees), which at least for me seems to be totally absurd.
It's not that absurd. A lot of the VR demos used Zenimax games, and many of the videos and interviews were filmed right inside Zenimax offices. Code was written on Zenimax time and file transfers, emails for advice, and more were made over Zenimax email addresses.
Carmack obviously re-wrote all code once leaving Zenimax, but there's a case to be made that Zenimax giving Carmack free reign to work on Oculus while at Zenimax significantly benefited Oculus.
Oculus agreed at some point — offering Zenimax a 2% stake. Zenimax asked for more (amount not specified in the complaint). Oculus response was that the "figure was so far out of the ballpark, we believe there is little hope" — negotiations broke down there.
The whole piece reads as if ZeniMax felt that it has somehow acquired possession of Carmack's knowledge (or any other of its employees), which at least for me seems to be totally absurd.