Jury: Oculus must pay $500 million to ZeniMax

Oculus must pay ZeniMax $500 million in damages, including for breaking a nondisclosure agreement. The jury also found that John Carmack took ZeniMax property to Oculus, but there was no theft of trade secrets.

During the Dallas District Court case, the jury largely ruled in favor of ZeniMax Media Inc. As a result, Oculus has to pay $200 million in damages for breaking a non-disclosure agreement and $50 million for copyright infringement. Both Oculus and founder Palmer Luckey must also pay $50 million for trademark abuse and the other founder, Brendan Iribe, must pay $150 million for this. Converted, the total amount awarded amounts to 463 million euros.

Also part of the case was the theft of trade secrets. This claim can be traced back to John Carmack’s transition from id Software, part of ZeniMax, to Oculus. ZeniMax claims that Carmack brought computer code and significant knowledge of VR headset technology into that transition. Along with other former ZeniMax employees, Oculus was able to build its Rift glasses thanks to research and ZeniMax’s copyrighted code, the claim said.

During the case, Carmack admitted to bringing e-mails containing code for virtual reality applications to Oculus. The jury ruled that he took property from ZeniMax, but he does not have to pay damages, according to Bloomberg. In 2014, Carmack announced that he had left id Software because he was not allowed to work on VR, or too little.

Oculus said it was especially pleased that the jury found the trade secret theft claims unproven. The company has always claimed that the Rift was developed with Oculus technology. The company will appeal against the verdict. ZeniMax is considering next steps. The company is not ruling out an attempt to stop the sale of the Rift glasses, Polygon writes.