Since 2017, Oculus Rift’s parent company – Facebook – have been in litigation over the VR system’s code, which stems from Oculus CTO John Carmack’s time working on the prototypes for ZeniMax. Now, it seems that Facebook and ZeniMax are burying the hatchet.
For the past year, ZeniMax and Facebook have been in court over code used in the Oculus VR headset’s overall functionality. In the mix of it all comes from former id Software co-founder John Carmack who had signed an NDA in order to work on prototypes of the Oculus Rift VR headset.
After leaving their agreements with the company and having Carmack work on the headset there, eventually, Oculus would leave altogether – Carmack included in order to further their business venture together. However, not all was great when he had as it was soon discovered that Carmack and Oculus had taken the code they were using with them.
Once this was discovered, ZeniMax Media filed a lawsuit against the owners of Oculus VR – Facebook – for the lump sum of $2 billion USD due to copyright infringement and theft back in 2017. The case would eventually head to a Federal District Court in Dallas, Texas, where a jury would lean in favor of ZeniMax Media. The court would eventually lean in ZeniMax’s favor, ruling that Oculus should have to pay $500 million in damages to ZeniMax only to later decrease the amount by half.
Both companies – Oculus-Facebook and ZeniMax – would appeal the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, where the appeal was pending until earlier today. Both companies have decided to reach a settlement in an undisclosed amount.
Robert Altman, ZeniMax’s Chairman and CEO, made the following statement regarding the resolution of the case: “We are pleased that a settlement has been reached and are fully satisfied by the outcome. While we dislike litigation, we will always vigorously defend against any infringement or misappropriation of our intellectual property by third parties.”
For ZeniMax Media and Facebook, it seems that the hatchet has finally been buried and the two are once more at talking terms. It comes only months after John Carmack, former co-founder of id Software, had stated his legal disputes had finally come to an end with ZeniMax Media.
My personal legal disputes are over — Zenimax has fully satisfied their obligations to me from the purchase of Id Software, and we have released all claims against each other. (The appeal for Oculus still goes forward)
— John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) October 11, 2018
The lawsuits only come at an end after Oculus CEO and Co-Founder, Brendan Iribe departed from his position at Facebook back in October, shortly after Carmack’s legal disputes came to an end. Now, it seems it’s a perfect time for great new beginning’s for both companies moving forward.
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Dustin is our native console gamer, PlayStation and Nintendo reviewer who has an appetite for anything that crosses the borders from across the big pond. His interest in JRPG’s, Anime, Handheld Gaming, and Pizza is insatiable. His elitist attitude gives him direction, want, and a need for the hardest difficulties in games, which is fun to watch, and hilarity at its finest. You can find him over on Twitter or Facebook.