Facebook to open an office for Oculus virtual reality research

Zenimax, the media giant behind id Software and Bethesda Game Studios, has claimed that Oculus VR has used Zenimax technology provided by former id Software luminary and current Oculus VR employee John Carmack, seeking tens of millions of dollars in damages. Luckey signed a confidentiality agreement with the company.

The lawsuit claims that Luckey built the Oculus Rift VR headset based on feedback and data collected from the prototype head-mounted display he created for Total Recall Technologies.

The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California is Total Recall Technologies vs. Palmer Luckey and Oculus VR, Inc., 15-2281.

This lawsuit was initially filed following Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus and due to this, Luckey commented at the time saying that this was “a brazen attempt to secure for itself a stake” in the acquisition. The plaintiff claims that Mr. Luckey used the information when he launched a Kickstarter campaign for a similar product, the Oculus Rift.

Although San Francisco judge William Alsup said the breach of contract lawsuit from Total Recall could proceed, he threw out further claims filed by a separate company accusing Luckey of passing off classified information as his own. Instead, it appears as though a lawsuit against him for an alleged breach of contract will be allowed to proceed, according to a ruling made today by a judge, Reuters reports.

Oculus has grown quickly since Facebook acquired the virtual reality startup in 2014.

Cormack also made a good point when defending the company against Zenimax, tweeting “Zenimax owns the code that I wrote, but they don’t own VR” and stating that not a single line of code he wrote when working at Zenimax is used with the Oculus Rift – so unpack that one any way you can. These trade secrets were instrumental in the development of the Oculus Rift VR headset.