Oculus and Facebook sued by ZeniMax Media

Oculus and Facebook are being sued by ZeniMax Media for allegedly stealing ‘essential’ virtual reality technology. That reports the Wall Street Journal. ZeniMax Media claims to own the rights to the technology behind the Oculus Rift.

Facebook bought Oculus VR in March for $1.45 billion. ZeniMax, the parent company of Bethesda and Id Software, among others, is suing Oculus and Facebook because former Id Software employee John Carmack allegedly stole “intellectual property” knowledge from Zenimax. He would then have taken that technology to Oculus. Carmack left Id Software in November 2013 because he was not allowed to work on the virtual reality goggles. He is currently the head of technical development at Oculus.

ZeniMax believes that the Oculus Rift goggles owe their success mainly to VR technology that Carmack is said to have stolen. The company’s attorneys now say that technology still belongs to ZeniMax.

In a response to The Verge, Oculus calls the situation “unfortunate” but also states that this is a known problem. Whenever a company succeeds, someone would come up with a ridiculous and absurd claim. Carmack himself late through Twitter know that the work he has done does not infringe any patents. “ZeniMax owns the code I wrote, they don’t own vr,” said Carmack.