ZeniMax attacks Oculus over attempt to overturn $500m verdict
Video games developer ZeniMax Media has attacked Facebook’s virtual reality company Oculus in a response to Oculus’s bid for a new IP trial.
In April this year, WIPR reported that Oculus had sought to overturn a finding of copyright and trademark infringement and breach of a non-disclosure agreement by a Texas jury.
Filed in 2014 at the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division, ZeniMax’s suit alleged that Oculus had used its code to build the Rift headset.
The headset is designed to allow people to enter into an immersive computer-generated environment.
ZeniMax also alleged that the disputed technology was improperly taken to Oculus by an employee who joined Oculus in 2013.
In February 2017, a jury awarded $500 million in damages to ZeniMax.
This included $50 million for copyright infringement, $200 million for breach of contract, a $50 million award against both Oculus and Palmer Luckey, the co-founder of Oculus, for false designation ($100 million in total), and $150 million against Oculus’s former CEO Brendan Iribe for false designation.
However, the jury found that Oculus was not guilty of misappropriating trade secrets.
Two months later, Luckey, Iribe and chief technology officer John Carmack filed a motion for judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) and a motion for a partial new trial.
On Friday, May 5, ZeniMax filed its responses to the request for a JMOL and a partial new trial.
“Their motion demanding a new trial is nothing more than a disappointed litigant’s imagined catalogue of unfounded grievances,” said the video games developer.
It added that Oculus could not provide any evidence to suggest that the jury was “motivated by passion or unfair prejudice” and had not shown that the verdict was “unjust, arbitrary, or unfair”.
“The jury’s damage awards, reached after several days of deliberation, are sensible, untainted by prejudice, and supported by the evidence presented,” said ZeniMax.
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