ZeniMax sues Facebook for $6 billion for stealing Oculus Rift code

ZeniMax Media has demanded $6 billion in damages in its lawsuit against Facebook. The media company states that Facebook has used technology for the development of the Oculus Rift of which the game maker owns the intellectual property.

Also, during the closing plea, ZeniMax Media claimed hundreds of millions of dollars in damages from Oculus VR technology boss John Carmack, Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey and former Oculus VR director Brendan Iribe, according to the website Law360.

The role of John Carmack is crucial in this case. He was an employee of id Software, of which ZeniMax Media is the parent company. Facebook bought Oculus VR in 2014. According to ZeniMax Media, Carmack wrote the code behind the Oculus Rift and brought it to Oculus VR when he started working there in 2013 after leaving id Software.

Facebook and Oculus VR deny that the Oculus Rift uses code previously written by Carmack, stating that the VR glasses were built from the ground up. As a result, according to the parties, no intellectual property of ZeniMax Media can be stolen. According to Zuckerberg, the technology behind the Oculus Rift wasn’t fully developed when Facebook bought Oculus VR.

Last week, during Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony, it emerged that the purchase price that Facebook paid for Oculus VR was not two billion dollars, but actually three billion dollars. The direct purchase price was $2 billion, but another billion dollars was set aside for bonus payments and employee retention of Oculus VR.