The Lawsuit
In May, 2014, ZeniMax officially filed a lawsuit against Oculus VR and its founder, Palmer Luckey, which held a number of allegations such as:
- Common law of misappropriation of trade secrets against all defendants, which included the use of secrets and the hiring of former employees who had access to crucial research.
- Copyright infringement against all defendants for the use of Doom 3: BFG Edition without permission on the VR.
- Breach of contract by all defendants, singling out the NDA that Luckey signed and breached by disclosing proprietary information.
- Unfair competition against Oculus. Due to the breach of the NDA and using ZeniMax technology without a license, it deprived ZeniMax of the opportunity to make money from its work.
- Unjust enrichment against all defendants, who “refuses to compensate ZeniMax” for the work it has done and has gained an “unauthorized access to ZeniMax intellectual property” by hiring former employees.
- Trademark infringement against all defendants, for when Oculus used franchise names such as Doom, Rage, and Skyrim.
- False designation against all defendants, because Oculus products use brands associated with ZeniMax, it can imply that they come from or have permission to be used by ZeniMax.
ZeniMax submitted several pieces of evidence, ranging from code to YouTube videos in efforts to showcase that Luckey could not have done this on his own. ZeniMax also submitted several emails from people on the Oculus team, such as Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe, seeking help from ZeniMax about software development.
There was also issue with what exactly Carmack provided for Oculus once he left id Software. According to his employment agreement, whatever he worked on had to be disclosed to the company, and anything that could be copyrighted would be done so by ZeniMax. They argued that without Carmack and his knowledge from id Software, the Oculus Rift couldn’t reach the stage acceptable for sale.
A few days after the lawsuit, Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion, and over a year later a judge decided to not dismiss the lawsuit, meaning both parties were heading to court.
In January of this year, both sides argued over who is actually responsible for the Rift and if any of the claims made by ZeniMax had any merit. There were several witnesses called to the stand including Carmack and experts who testified about allegations of computers being wiped and whose code the Oculus was running, according to a report by Polygon.
