Back in 2014, ZeniMax Media filed a lawsuit against Oculus Rift, alleging that the latter company had appropriated trade secrets and infringed upon ZeniMax trademarks and copyrights in their development of VR technology. Now, in an amended form of the lawsuit, ZeniMax is directly accusing id Software co-founder and Oculus’ Chief Technology Officer John Carmack of theft.
Carmack was employed by ZeniMax prior to his departure for Oculus, and ZeniMax now alleges that he copied “thousands of documents” from their computers to a USB storage device prior to his change of employment, They further allege that he returned to ZeniMax offices after his termination to take a tool for development of VR technology.
That’s not the only big allegation. ZeniMax now suggests Palmer Luckey, the face of Oculus Rift development, lacked the skills necessary to develop home VR. ”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.” Finally, they accused Facebook, which purchased Oculus Rift in 2014, of inducing the VR company to infringe upon its agreements with ZeniMax.
This report comes to us via Game Informer, which also received a response from Oculus stating “This complaint filed by ZeniMax is one-sided and conveys only ZeniMax’s interpretation of the story. We continue to believe this case has no merit, and we will address all of ZeniMax’s allegations in court.”
