The long-running legal standoff between Bethesda subsidiary Zenimax Media and Facebook's Oculus VR company has apparently reached a conclusion. A Dallas jury has ordered Oculus to pay $500 million to Zenimax for damages over copyright infringements and violations of a non-disclosure agreement.
Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey was said to have violated the terms of his NDA when he and the company's CTO John Carmack allegedly stole documents and development tools containing Zenimax trade secrets to be used in developing the Oculus VR headset. Zenimax also claimed that after Facebook's controversial acquisition of Oculus, the company failed to vet Oculus executives properly for possible conflicts of interest.
Originally, Zenimax was seeking a hefty sum of $4 billion in the case, but it was ruled that although Luckey and Carmack acquired the documents illegally, that they did not leverage any of Zenimax's trade secrets to make the headset. As a result, Oculus must pay $200 million for the breach of the NDA, $50 million for copyright infringement, and another $50 million for false designation. Former Oculus CEO and co-founder Brendan Iribe must pay $150 million also for false designation, while Luckey is in another $50 million.
Oculus is expected to appeal the verdict, but for right now, things seem like they certainly could have been worse.
