Oculus’ Palmer Luckey to be sued for breach of contract

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A US judge has ruled that a lawsuit accusing Oculus founder Palmer Luckey of exploiting his former position at a VR company can go ahead.

The breach of contract claim relates to Luckey’s role at Total Recall Technologies between 2011 and 2012, Reuters reports.

Total Recall said Luckey was hired to build a prototype head-mounted display, and signed a confidentiality agreement relating to knowledge of the hardware.

When Luckey left to set up Oculus in 2012, Total Recall claims that he used the information gained from his time at the company to accelerate the creation of the Rift headset.

Facebook acquired Oculus for $2 billion back in 2014 – a deal that Luckey claimed was the only motivation for what he dismissed as false accusations.

He called the move "a brazen attempt [by Total Recall] to secure for itself a stake in Oculus VR’s recent multi-billion dollar acquisition by Facebook".

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.

He also dismissed other claims levelled at Luckey by Total Recall, including fraud.