Jury Orders Oculus To Pay Zenimax $500 Million

In the first big Virtual Reality lawsuit, the jury has ordered Facebook to pay Zenimax $500 million. Not because Oculus' CTO John Carmack stole intellectual property, but because Palmer Luckey violated his non-disclosure agreement with Zenimax. Zenimax was seeking $4 billion in damages.

Oculus sent the following comment to GamesBeat following the verdict:

“The heart of this case was about whether Oculus stole ZeniMax’s trade secrets, and the jury found decisively in our favor. We’re obviously disappointed by a few other aspects of today’s verdict, but we are undeterred. Oculus products are built with Oculus technology. Our commitment to the long-term success of VR remains the same, and the entire team will continue the work they’ve done since day one – developing VR technology that will transform the way people interact and communicate. We look forward to filing our appeal and eventually putting this litigation behind us.”

If you don't know, the overall takeaway of the case was Zenimax alleged Oculus created the Rift with technology owned by Zenimax, and Facebook acquired Oculus for $2 billion aware of the stolen technologies—or didn't do due diligence when purchasing.

Instead, Luckey takes the heat for violating his contract with Zenimax.