The claim that threatens the future of Facebook’s Oculus VR may have just gotten a lot more expensive. Yesterday, in closing statements of the legal team representing ZeniMax Media asked the jury in a Dallas courtroom to rule against the Oculus VR and grant a total of $4 billion. That is for the $2 billion in compensation and another $2 billion in punitive damages.
ZeniMax Media's Case Goes To Jury And Wants $4 Billion From Oculus
The case between ZeniMax Media and Oculus VR hinges on the claim that Oculus VR and its founder Palmer Luckey stole fundamental VR technologies from ZeniMax Media subsidiary id Software. It asserts that these contributions were fundamental to the success of the company, which was acquired by Facebook for around $3 billion in March of 2014, according to TechCrunch. “If they could make it, why’d they take it?” Sammi reportedly told the jury, referencing VR-related company intellectual property.
In delivering closing remarks, ZeniMax attorney named Anthony Sammi referenced findings that data had been erased from the computers of Oculus just three minutes before they were imaged for the court case. The correspondence between the Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, which he expressed as evidence of collusion, are also gone. Sammi, furthermore insisted that the technology feeding the most significant software functions on the Oculus Rift headset shipped to early Kickstarter backers was based on code from id Software intellectual property.
The legal team that represents both Facebook and Oculus suggested that ZeniMax’s claims were “sour grapes,” and the effect of embarrassment for not recognizing the possible market of virtual reality, according to Polygon. Moreover, the defense referenced the findings of a forensic expert who didn’t notice any evidence of the code copying in what Oculus had shipped. Also, while asserting that most of the “trade secrets” ZeniMax’s legal team was lauding were already publicly known and that other solution to the problems already existed.
