[BreachExchange] Lawsuit accusing Facebook-owned Oculus of intellectual property theft heads to trial

[Audrey McNeil]

http://www.siliconbeat.com/2017/01/09/lawsuit-accusing-
facebook-owned-oculus-intellectual-property-theft-heads-trial/

The story of Oculus’ origins is well-known. A teenager named Palmer Luckey
creates a prototype for a virtual reality headset in his parents’ garage,
crosses digital paths with a reputable video game programmer and starts a
company that Facebook purchases for $2 billion.

But a lawsuit against the virtual reality company set for trial Monday
paints the story of Oculus’ origins as a “fanciful” tale. It accuses Oculus
of using stolen technology from ZeniMax in its Rift headsets.

“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.

The 2014 lawsuit against Oculus and Luckey was later amended to include
Facebook, Oculus’ former CEO Brendan Iribe and John Carmack, who left
ZeniMax in 2013 to become Oculus’ chief technology officer.

ZeniMax also accuses Facebook of closing its purchase of Oculus even after
it found out that the virtual reality company allegedly misappropriated
intellectual property from ZeniMax.

Facebook-owned Oculus has denied the allegations and claims that “not a
line of ZeniMax code or any of its technology” was used in any Oculus VR
product. ZeniMax only raised infringement claims and wanted a quick payout
after the social media giant bought Oculus, according to court documents.

Bloomberg, which reported this story earlier, said Facebook CEO Mark
Zuckerberg could be called on to testify as a witness during trial.

Luckey’s involvement with ZeniMax dates back to 2012 when Carmack reached
out to the college student for the prototype of the Rift, which he heard
about on an internet forum. Carmack is the co-founder of id Software, a
Texas video game developer owned by ZeniMax. 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,
the company recruited its employees, including Carmack, to join Oculus.

The lawsuit alleges that the defendants 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
non-disclosure 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.

The case, ZeniMax Media Inc. v. Oculus VR Inc., is in the U.S. District
Court for the Northern District of Texas.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.riskbasedsecurity.com/pipermail/breachexchange/attachments/20170110/93ed949c/attachment.html>