ZeniMax Wants The Courts To Halt Oculus Rift Sales Completely

Back in 2014, ZeniMax took Oculus to court in which they allege that Oculus apparently “misappropriated ZenMax trade secrets”, or so they claimed. Earlier this month a jury in Dallas, Texas ruled in favor of ZeniMax where they awarded the company a whopping $500 million in damages.

As if this wasn’t enough, a report from Upload VR has revealed that ZeniMax is asking the court to halt the sales of Oculus Rift completely on a worldwide basis. In an injunction filed by ZeniMax and uploaded by Upload VR, part of the filing reads, “…permanently enjoined, on a worldwide basis, from using…any of the Copyrighted Materials, including but not limited to (i) system software for Oculus PC (including the Oculus PC SDK); (ii) system software for Oculus Mobile (including the Oculus Mobile SDK); (iii) Oculus integration with the Epic Games Unreal Engine; and (iv) Oculus integration with the Unity Technologies Unity Game Engine.”

As to whether or not the $500 million in damages was enough compensation, ZeniMax responded by saying, “The jury’s damage award here, however substantial, is an insufficient incentive for Defendants to cease infringing. Just minutes after the jury revealed its verdict, Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg, publicly stated that the jury’s verdict of a half billion dollars was ‘not material to [Facebook’s] financials.’”

As to whether or not the courts will rule in ZeniMax’s favor remains to be seen, but there are some who believe that it might not be upheld simply because the jury did not find that Oculus had stolen trade secrets from ZeniMax, but rather they ruled on how Oculus’ co-founder Palmer Luckey failed to comply with a non-disclosure agreement, thus making Oculus liable as a result.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Gadgets
Tags: Legal, oculus, Oculus Rift, Virtual Reality (VR), Wearable Tech