Zenimax Threatens Action over Oculus Rift Rights

Continuing their battle over ownership of the rights to the Oculus Rift, ZeniMax Media has threatened legal action over theft of its intellectual property by Oculus VR to produce its virtual reality headset the Oculus Rift, which was recently sold to Facebook for $2 billion. 

The legal row stems primarily from the work of John Carmack, who was a ZeniMax employee and founder of its developer id Software before leaving to join Oculus in September of last year. According to a statement by ZeniMax last week, Carmack took with him proprietary ideas that are the property of the company, and which it has never been compensated for by Oculus.

Zenimax also claims to have provided "VR technology and other valuable assistance to Palmer Luckey [Oculus' founder] and other Oculus employees in 2012 and 2013 to make the Oculus Rift a viable VR product." Zenimax also threatened to take any necessary legal action to enforce its rights to its intellectual property.

Oculus, for its part, has vehemently denied ZeniMax's allegations in a statement today, defending that it has not used a single "line of Zenimax code or any of its technology in any Oculus products," nor Carmack stolen any intellectual property of ZeniMax. In fact, Oculus goes on to explain, Carmack left ZeniMax after the company prevented him from working on virtual reality projects and pulled the plug on many of its VR developments.

Oculus finished their statement by noting that despite the Oculus Rift's source code being available online, ZeniMax has yet to identify any specific code or technology as stolen.