It has been two years since multimedia conglomerate ZeniMax Media Inc. first filed its lawsuit against Oculus VR LLC., claiming that the Facebook-owned company stole some of the technology used in the Oculus Rift headset. Now, ZeniMax has updated that lawsuit to directly name Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, CEO Brendan Iribe, and CTO John Carmack (above) as defendants in the suit.

The crux of ZeniMax’s complaint lies in contributions the company says it made to the early development of Oculus Rift. At that time, Carmack still served as technical director for the ZeniMax-owned game studio Id Software, which Carmack himself had co-founded in the early 1990s. ZeniMax claims in its suit that Carmack corresponded with Luckey early in the development of Oculus Rift, leading to a number of major improvements to the headset.

“At that time, the Rift was a crude prototype that lacked a head mount, virtual reality-specific software,integrated motion sensors, and other critical features and capabilities needed to create a viable product,” ZeniMax says in its lawsuit. “Carmack was given a copy of the prototype by Luckey, and Carmack and other ZeniMax personnel added numerous improvements to the prototype. Together, those ZeniMax employees literally transformed the Rift by adding physical hardware components and developing specialized software for its operation.”

ZeniMax says that these improvements were made under a Non-Disclosure Agreement with Luckey, which the company says was broken when Luckey formed Oculus VR to commercialize his VR headset. Carmack later left Id Software and now serves as CTO at Oculus.

In light of the updated filing, Oculus responded with a statement once again denying ZeniMax’s allegations.

“This complaint filed by ZeniMax is one-sided and conveys only ZeniMax’s interpretation of the story,” an Oculus spokesperson said. “We continue to believe this case has no merit, and we will address all of ZeniMax’s allegations in court.”

Claiming credit for the VR boom

Oculus Rift played a major role renewing industry interest in virtual reality, and many consumers, especially in the gaming community, eagerly followed the headset’s highly publicized development cycle. With recent developments, some analysts expecting the VR/AR industry to hit $162 billion by the end of the decade, it is clear to see why ZeniMax would not want to miss out on what could be a major cut of that market.

“Defendants have wrongfully taken that ZeniMax intellectual property and commercially exploited it for their own gain.” ZeniMax says in its suit. “Defendants now stand to realize billions of dollars in value from ZeniMax’s intellectual property.”

ZeniMax is still a major player in virtual reality, as its subsidiaries include a number of well known game studios, most notably Id Software (Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, Quake), Arkane Studios (Dishonored), and Bethesda Game Studios (Fallout 4, Skyrim). Id and Bethesda are both working on high-tech VR demonstrations with Doom VR and Fallout 4 VR respectively.

Screenshot via Oculus | Twitch