Mark Zuckerberg’s VR dreams could likely be heading towards a possible legal nightmare what with the judge dismissing Facebook lawyers’ argument that the company CEO shouldn’t be required to testify in a case concerning their acquisition of Oculus.
Facebook had acquired the VR start-up Oculus back in 2014 in a deal worth $2.3 billion. The case too is running since then with the game publishing company, ZeniMax Media claiming themselves to be the original proponents of the virtual reality technology that Oculus claims to be its own. ZeniMax too is claiming $2 billion in damages in lieu of the above.
ZeniMax Media that has such developer studios to its credit as Bethesda, Arkane and id Software has stated Oculus founders Palmer Luckey and John Carmack have illegally procured the key technologies that powers the VR headset. No wonder, both Luckey, and Carmack too have a lot of explaining to do before the judges.
In fact, Carmack is also facing direct legal charges from ZeniMax and is accused of having stolen thousands of documents from a computer located in ZeniMax’s premises. That is not all as Carmack also stands accused of having retuned to ZeniMax and taking possession of a customized tool required for creating VR Tech. ZeniMax claimed in court these acts are in gross violation of employee agreement to which Carmack is a signatory.
Carmack is now serving as the chief technology officer as Oculus. He had also continued to hold on to his portfolio at id Software till November 2013 even though he had joined Oculus on Aug of that year.
Luckey too has earned a bit of notoriety thanks to his adopting shadowy means to help improve the chances of Donald Trump came to light. That was in September last though he has apologized for his acts or for any damage in Facebook’s or Oculus’ image that it might have caused.
Facebook lawyers argued they shouldn’t be drawn into a case that has to do with the way the Oculus is founded or the way it acquired its VR tech. However, the judge clearly isn’t interested, and it remains to be seen how things pan out in the end.
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