Facebook-owned virtual reality company Oculus has been ordered to pay $500 million in damages to video game publisher ZeniMax Media for failing to comply with a non-disclosure agreement.intellectual property. ZeniMax in court said it should win $4 billion in compensation and punitive damages.
The decision came down on Wednesday after the Dallas, Texas, jury deliberated for two and a half days on a verdict, according to Polygon. They also said Oculus did not misappropriate ZeniMax trade secrets, as the publisher had claimed.
The figte has benn going on since 2014, when ZeniMax sued Oculus for misappropriating trade secrets, breach of contract, unjust enrichment, and unfair competition. According to the complaint, former employee John Carmack started corresponding with Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey in April 2012, when the Oculus Rift was “a crude prototype.”
Luckey gave Carmack an early version of the Rift “and Carmack and other ZeniMax personnel added numerous improvements to the prototype,” the complaint said. “Together, those ZeniMax employees literally transformed the Rift by adding physical hardware components and developing specialized software for its operation.”
Most expect Oculus appeal the ruling
