UPDATED 12:34 EDT / JUNE 22 2017

EMERGING TECH

Zenimax is still fighting for a cut of Oculus VR’s profits

Game publisher Zenimax Media LLC won a major court victory against Oculus VR Inc. earlier this year, earning a $500 million judgement, but it seems that Zenimax is still not finished with the Facebook Inc.-owned virtual reality company.

In February, Zenimax filed for an injunction against Oculus, asking a judge to block Oculus sales unless they cough up 20 percent in royalties on the hardware the next 10 years. This week U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade heard arguments from the game publisher on why its previous victory was not enough.

During the hearing, Zenimax argued that its successful $500 million case against Oculus “clearly establishes that Oculus wrongly obtained ZeniMax VR technology under the NDA [non-disclosure agreement] and used it … to establish a business that would not have existed without ZeniMax.” The company also argued that while Oculus founders grew wealthy after their company was purchased by Facebook, Zenimax “never received a penny” in return for its alleged role in developing the virtual reality technology used to build the Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR.

Meanwhile, Facebook argued that Zenimax cannot demonstrate that it is “suffering continuing harm” from Oculus, and the social media giant may have an easier time fending off Zenimax’s injunction than it did with the original copyright lawsuit. Although Zenimax won its case against Oculus and its founders, Brendan Iribe and Palmer Luckey, the court ultimately concluded that Oculus was not guilty of the more serious charge of stealing trade secrets.

Oculus Chief Technology Officer John Carmack, who previously worked for the Zenimax-owned Id Software, has repeatedly denied Zenimax’s claims that he stole confidential files or copied data related to his VR work when he left the company. Zenimax named Carmack in its suit against Oculus, but he came out unscathed. Shortly after the judgment was announced, Carmack took to social media to criticize the lawsuit and Zenimax’s arguments, particularly those made by the game publisher’s expert witness.

Carmack was especially critical of the expert’s claim that he was “absolutely certain there was non-literal copying” of Zenimax’s data. The witness’ full report and testimony were sealed by the court, and Carmack said that “if the code examples were released publicly, the Internet would have viciously mocked the analysis.”

Carmack has since filed his own lawsuit against Zenmiax, claiming that the company still owes him $22.5 million for his sale of Id Software to the company.

Photo: Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook

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