Oculus

Update 02.03.2017: Zenimax has reportedly filed an injunction that could see the Oculus Rift and the software needed to use it taken off the market.

The injunction proposes Oculus be "permanently enjoined, on a worldwide basis, from using any of the Copyrighted Materials, including but not limited to (i) system software for Oculus PC (including the Oculus PC SDK); (ii) system software for Oculus Mobile (including the Oculus Mobile SDK); (iii) Oculus integration with the Epic Games Unreal Engine; and (iv) Oculus integration with the Unity Technologies Unity Game Engine."


Shortly after, Oculus dropped the price of its Rift to $499 and $99, or $598 for both. In the UK, they'll cost £499 and £99 respectively. The Oculus Sensor price is also being cut from $79 to $59.

Original story:

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Getty Images / Hindustan Times

The owners of Facebook and Oculus have been ordered to pay $500 million (£395m) in damages to ZeniMax after unlawfully using the company's virtual reality technology, a US court has ruled.


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The jury at the Texas court decided the defendants had not taken ZeniMax's trade secrets in the development of the Oculus Rift but had used code belonging to the video games company. It was also found that Oculus CTO, John Carmack, broke a non-disclosure agreement with ZeniMax after leaving the firm to join Oculus.

The $500m Facebook and Oculus has to pay, while substantial, is much less than the $2bn (£1.6bn) originally asked for by ZeniMax. At the end of the three-week trial, which saw Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg called to the stand, ZeniMax said it was happy with the result.

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"We are pleased the jury has awarded ZeniMax $500m for defendants' unlawful infringement of our copyrights and trademarks," ZeniMax chief executive Robert Altman said in a statement. The biggest portion of the payout relates to Luckey's breaking of the confidentiality agreement. Although the New York Times says the figure may decrease as litigation continues.


The company said it is now looking into a separate court order to limit Oculus and Facebook's use of the code, and could, in theory, pursue commission on Oculus sales.

A "disappointed" spokesperson for Oculus responded saying it will appeal. “The heart of this case was about whether Oculus stole ZeniMax’s trade secrets, and the jury found decisively in our favour," the spokesperson said.

Hours after the court revealed the outcome of the case, Facebook posted its latest quarterly earnings. During the final three months of 2016 the firm took $8.8bn revenue as it grew its online reach. The quarter was Facebook's most successful ever and was led by advertising revenue. "Mobile advertising revenue represented approximately 84 per cent of advertising revenue for the fourth quarter of 2016, up from approximately 80 per cent of advertising revenue in the fourth quarter of 2015," Facebook said in its financial documents.

Facebook had 1.23bn daily users, on average, in December and 1.86bn monthly active users. The figures represent an 18 and 17 per cent increase on the year before. On mobile, the number of monthly and daily active people accessing Facebook were 1.74bn and 1.15bn.

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At the heart of the case was whether key technologies used in the virtual reality headset were stolen from ZeniMax Media, the games publisher behind developers Bethesda, Arkane, and id Software. The public jury trial began in Dallas on January 9.

Zuckerberg's call to testify came despite Facebook lawyers arguing he should not have to answer questions on the company's acquisition of Oculus; this argument was dismissed by the judge.

Last August, ZeniMax directly accused id Software co-founder John Carmack of theft, claiming he stole data from the company before he left. ZeniMax also claims Carmack violated his employee agreement and confidentiality clauses with the company.

In its 2016 amended complaint, ZeniMax alleged Carmack "copied thousands of documents from a computer at ZeniMax to a USB storage device", and that after "Carmack's employment with ZeniMax was terminated, he returned to ZeniMax's premises to take a customised tool for developing VR Technology belonging to ZeniMax that itself is part of ZeniMax's VR technology".


The accusation led Tony Sammi, one of ZeniMax's legal representatives, to call Facebook's acquisition of Oculus "one of the biggest technology heists ever" during opening statements in the trial.

The current legal drama isn't the first time 24-year-old Luckey has brought controversy to the Oculus brand. Last September, Luckey vanished from the internet after being revealed as part of a 'shitposting' campaign to skew the contentious US election in favour of Donald Trump.

Luckey co-founded Oculus in 2012 and drew in $2.4m on crowdfunding site Kickstarter to produce the first development kits. Carmack joined the company on August 7, 2013, but did not leave id Software until November 22 that year. At the time, Carmack claimed his decision was because ZeniMax did not want to support developing games for Oculus VR.