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posted by martyb on Thursday May 22 2014, @02:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the money-see-money-do dept.

Just in: many news outlets report on Zenimax suing Oculus over misappropriation of trade secrets.

ArsTechnica has a good timeline of the "brawl" (too long to post here, but RTFA for it):

What started merely as strongly worded letters and back-and-forth accusations between Id Software parent company ZeniMax Media and VR headset maker Oculus has now turned into an actual legal case. ZeniMax today filed a federal lawsuit in the Northern Texas district accusing Oculus of misappropriation of trade secrets, copyright infringement, breach of contract, unfair competition, unjust enrichment, trademark infringement, and false designation.

In a statement, an Oculus spokesperson said "the lawsuit filed by ZeniMax has no merit whatsoever. As we have previously said, ZeniMax did not contribute to any Oculus technology. Oculus will defend these claims vigorously."

Popcorn, anyone?

[Details on the lawsuit here]

 
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by tibman on Thursday May 22 2014, @05:58PM

    by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 22 2014, @05:58PM (#46471)

    They might be a little pissed about losing Carmack as well. Claiming that everything he wrote, even during his free time, is their property is far fetched. Does that mean they own Armadillo Aerospace as well? I can see a non-compete clause preventing him from working against them but since they don't seem to actually have an HMD, i'll call BS on that too.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by RaffArundel on Thursday May 22 2014, @07:08PM

    by RaffArundel (3108) on Thursday May 22 2014, @07:08PM (#46488) Homepage

    Claiming that everything he wrote, even during his free time, is their property is far fetched.

    Agreed, and that is exactly what I thought they were doing before getting to see the filing. Taken with a healthy dose of "you know they are spinning things to make their case", Zenimax is claiming that they were more involved than simply letting him work Rift on the side. If (and that is a big IF) that is true, and they were in talks for deeper involvement, there is more merit than I thought. Granted that "merit" went from zero to a very small number.

    As for the non-compete, there is also a claim of other people who quit at the same time and now work at Oculus. I have a generally low opinion on those types of agreements, but there is that. I don't recall anything about having/developing a HMD in-house, but they do claim the low latency and tracking technology was designed in-house. It is clear that they were interested in partnering/acquiring them.

    I thought the Rift was going to be cool. Once they got bought by FB, I greatly lowered my expectations. Now I get to watch two companies I have no particular love for go at each other. It almost makes it interesting again.