ZeniMax Media Inc. and its subsidiary, id Software LLC, have filed suit today against both Oculus VR, Inc. and its founder, Palmer Luckey, for illegally misappropriating ZeniMax trade secrets relating to virtual reality technology, and infringing ZeniMax copyrights and trademarks. This mostly has to do with their hiring of John Carmack at CTO- ZeniMax believes that code that he wrote while under contract to ZeniMax made its way into this new technology, and they want a piece of the piece.
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It must seem like such a sweet pie, especially now that Facebook owns it. Besides misapproprtating trade secrets ZeniMax also asserted claims for breach of contract, unjust enrichment, and unfair competition against the defendants. The suit was filed in federal court in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
ZeniMax started making stirring of a lawsuit in progress last month, making allegations which were soon refuted by Oculus Rift. "There is not a line of Zenimax code or any of its technology in any Oculus products," Oculus Rift VR stated at the time. "John Carmack did not take any intellectual property from Zenimax."
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Carmack backed that up himself on Twitter, stating on May 1 that "Oculus uses zero lines of code that I wrote while under contract to Zenimax."
"All efforts by ZeniMax to resolve this matter amicably have been unsuccessful," Zenimax stated in their release. "Oculus has recently issued a public statement remarkably claiming that "ZeniMax has never contributed IP or technology to Oculus." Meanwhile, Luckey has held himself out to the public as the visionary developer of virtual reality technology, when in fact the key technology Luckey used to establish Oculus was developed by ZeniMax."
"Intellectual property forms the foundation of our business," said Robert Altman, Chairman & CEO of ZeniMax. "We cannot ignore the unlawful exploitation of intellectual property that we develop and own, nor will we allow misappropriation and infringement to go unaddressed."
"ZeniMax and id Software take their intellectual property rights seriously," said P. Anthony Sammi, a Partner of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP which represents ZeniMax and id in this matter. "We now look to the federal courts and will pursue all appropriate measures available under the law to rectify defendants' egregious conduct," he added.
More on this lawsuit as we hear it. Will this disrupt Oculus Rift's plans for release later this year? Let's hope not.
