Legal state of Oculus Rift?

[AAIK]

I saw a video on youtube a few weeks back that said Oculus lost a case concerning some NDA and copyright infringement. They were ordered to pay up hundreds of millions of dollars concerning those issues.

But, what is possibly worse is that there might be an injunction on sales of the rift (based on possible intent of Zenimax), so; has anyone been keeping up on the story of this?

I haven't seen any updated news on this topic yet, but it is quite a problem if it does go down that way.

[Skuzzy]

It was being tried in Texas, and last I heard it was finally settled for a lot of cash.  They should be fine as they are owned by Facebook.

[Bizman]

This must be the first time that I have to admit something good coming from Facebook.

[SIK1]

This must be the first time that I have to admit something good coming from Facebook.

   Agreed 

 
Sik

[Vulcan]

The verdict was somewhat misreported, Luckey and the other guy were found guilty of NDA violations, there was no copyright infringement found. They are appealing (probably the size of the payout). A lot of media jumped on it saying facebook stole the code, which was not true in the verdict (quite the opposite).




Half a billion does seem steep for an NDA violation.

[Skuzzy]

You are correct Vulcan.  They are indeed appealing the verdict.  Yes, I agree, the cash award was insane.

[Vulcan]

To understand the development of the Rift you need to look here: http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=140&t=14777

Palmer hung around the mtbs3d forums a lot, iirc he had a day job with electronics and he was doing headset repairs at home. I had a emagin Z800 that died on me (blown unmarked capacitor). I sent it to Palmer to see if he could fix it. Unfortunately not as he could not determine the capacitor type. It ended up in his pile of spare parts.

You can see that he had done the concept build way before any commercial guys got involved. Carmack came in a year later I think, then Zenimax told him to leave it alone as they thought it was a waste of time. Carmack resigned and went to work with Palmer. Fast forward a couple of years, facebook drops a bunch of $$$$ suddenly zenimax are all interested again.

[Easyscor]

Apparently ZeniMax is now asking for an injunction against Oculus distributing the software with their virtual reality products until some kind of new settlement is reached on the appeals.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39076771