Zenimax Media and its subsidiary id Software followed up on its previous threats and filed a lawsuit in the federal court accusing Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey and his company of unlawful exploitation and infringement on its intellectual property.
"Intellectual property forms the foundation of our business," stated Zenimax CEO Robert Altman in a press release. "We cannot ignore the unlawful exploitation of intellectual property that we develop and own, nor will we allow misappropriation and infringement to go unaddressed.""
According to the press release, Zenimax was forced to take matters to the court due to Oculus VR's illegal exploitation of its intellectual property, including "trade secrets, copyrighted computer code, and technical know-how relating to virtual reality technology."
In the court filing Zenimax described Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey as a simple a "video game enthusiast" who approached Zenimax with nothing but a "crude prototype" of a primitive VR headset that was worthless before "Zenimax employees literally transformed the Rift by adding physical hardware components and developing specialized software for its operation,"
According to the lawsuit, all Zenimax employees' contributions are legally owned by the company and were given to Oculus under a legal agreement that it could not be "used, disclosed, or transferred to third parties without Zenimax's approval."
Consequently, Zenimax is accusing Oculus and Luckey of breach of contract, unjust enrichment, and unfair competition.
On the other side, Oculus VR continues to deny all of Zenimax's accusations. "The lawsuit filed by Zenimax has no merit whatsoever," an Oculus VR representative affirmed. "As we have previously said, Zenimax did not contribute to any Oculus technology. Oculus will defend these claims vigorously."
