Almost 5 years after announcing the acquisition of OculusVR, Facebook seems to have left behind the controversy over intellectual property infringement surrounding the agreement.
ZeniMax, parent company of Bethesda Softworks and id Software, said today that it has agreed to settle its lawsuit against Facebook and Oculus for stealing trade secrets for the development of virtual reality technology.
ZeniMax filed a lawsuit against Facebook in 2014 after John Carmack, co-founder of Id Software, joined Oculus as a technology leader. The lawsuit, which claimed up to $4 billion in damages, alleged that Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus, had stolen trade secrets and used them to develop Oculus Rift eyewear.
In 2017, ZeniMax won a $500 million lawsuit in a Texas court, but it was later found that Oculus did not steal the company’s trade secrets. Earlier this year, a federal judge reduced compensation for copyright infringement to $250 million and dismissed the charges against Luckey and Brendan Iribe, former Oculus director general. Both parties have commenced appeal proceedings against this decision, which remained in effect until today’s announcement of the agreement.
In a statement, ZeniMax CEO Robert Altman said:
“We are pleased that an agreement has been reached and that we are fully satisfied with the outcome (…) Although we do not like litigation, we will always defend ourselves vigorously against any infringement or misappropriation of our intellectual property by third parties.”
ZeniMax is currently dedicated to publishing interactive and original content for video game consoles, portable devices, and computers. The company also sued Samsung in May 2017, claiming that the South Korean manufacturer also stole trade secrets to develop its Gear VR glasses. However, the judge rejected the petition.