Zuckerberg to testify in $2B Oculus suit
Rival firm claims that Facebook’s unit is based on stolen VR technology
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to testify in a Dallas courtroom Tuesday in a $2 billion lawsuit that claims the social media giant purchased Oculus even though it knew the virtual reality headset maker allegedly used stolen technology.
ZeniMax Media, which owns Texas video game developer id Software, filed the lawsuit in 2014 against Oculus and its co-founder Palmer Luckey. Lawyers for ZeniMax later amended the lawsuit to include Facebook.
Facebook closed its $2 billion purchase of Oculus in 2014 and went through with the merger even though the Menlo Park tech firm was fully aware of the allegations against Oculus, the lawsuit claims. The social media giant intended to “leverage and commercially exploit” the virtual reality technology that was stolen from ZeniMax, according to the lawsuit.
Facebook-owned Oculus denied the allegations.
“Oculus and its founders have invested a wealth of time and money in VR because we believe it can fundamentally transform the way people interact and communicate,” an Oculus spokesperson said in a statement last week when the jury trial for the lawsuit started.
“We’re disappointed that another company is using wasteful litigation to attempt to take credit for technology that it did not have the vision, expertise or patience to build.”
In a statement Monday, ZeniMax and id Software said they welcome the opportunity to present “substantial evidence” that will show the defendants misappropriated their virtual reality intellectual property.
“That evidence includes the theft of trade secrets and highly confidential information, including computer code. ZeniMax will also present evidence of the defendants’ intentional destruction of evidence to cover up their wrongdoing,” ZeniMax said in the statement. “ZeniMax and id Software are the visionary developers of breakthrough VR technology, and look forward to the vindication of our claims.”
The lawsuit also names former Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe and John Carmack, who left ZeniMax in 2013 to become Oculus’ chief technology officer.
Luckey’s involvement with ZeniMax dates back to 2012 when Carmack reached out to the college student for the prototype of Rift, a virtual reality headset. Carmack is the co-founder of id Software, which is known for developing first-person shooter video games such as “Doom” and “Quake.” Carmack and the company’s employees then transformed the headset “from $500 worth of optics into a powerful, immersive virtual reality experience,” the lawsuit alleges.
ZeniMax also used the modified headset to showcase a video game developed by id Software called “Doom 3” at the E3 Convention in Los Angeles that year. Luckey then started the virtual reality company Oculus, which raised $2.4 million for the Rift headset in a Kickstarter campaign.
Instead of compensating ZeniMax for the use of its intellectual property, Oculus recruited its employees, including Carmack, to join the company. It fed the media a “false and fanciful” story of a teenager who invented in his parents’ garage the technology to power a virtual reality headset, the lawsuit alleges.
“Luckey lacked the training, expertise, resources or know-how to create commercially viable VR technology, his computer programming skills were rudimentary and he relied on ZeniMax’s computer program code and games to demonstrate the prototype Rift,” the lawsuit states.
But Oculus claims not a line of ZeniMax’s code or technology was used in the tech firm’s virtual reality product and that the company only raised these infringement claims against Oculus after the Facebook deal “and the perceived chance for a quick payout,” according to court documents.
The lawsuit — ZeniMax Media v. Oculus VR — alleges that the defendants, including Facebook, misappropriated ZeniMax’s trade secrets and infringed on the copyright of the “Doom 3” computer program and other code. It also claims that Luckey and Oculus violated a nondisclosure agreement with the company and that Carmack breached his employment agreement with ZeniMax, copying thousands of documents from a company computer on a USB device.
Carmack took the witness stand last week and Luckey is expected to testify later this week.
Zuckerberg has talked publicly about his big plans for virtual reality, envisioning a future where people will experience moments on social media as if they are there in person. Oculus started shipping its virtual reality headsets to consumer in 2016.