The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that ZeniMax, owner of game development subsidiaries Bethesda Softworks and Id Software, has sent numerous letters to Oculus VR and Facebook’s lawyers since news of last month’s acquisition.
The letters allege that John Carmack – who, joined up with Oculus last summer, prior to leaving Id entirely in November – “improperly took ZeniMax’s intellectual property with him to Oculus.” Technology with which Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus VR, “was able to transform his garage-based pipe dream into a working reality”.
To be fair, ZeniMax isn’t merely a soldier of fortune trying to get a chunk of the $2 billion Facebook paid for Oculus earlier this year. It allegedly tried to recover money for intellectual property rights as far back as 2012.
The report alleges that Carmack wrote key software for the Rift that turned it into a viable product, and as he was an employee of Id at the time ZeniMax can lay claim to that software.
Carmack fired back with this Tweet: “It’s a mess, regardless. An unsightly brawl and, frankly, a rather mercenary move on ZeniMax’s part. We’ll have to wait and see what kind of details emerge regarding Carmack’s contract with ZeniMax, whether a suit even makes it all the way to court, and if this affects the Facebook acquisition at all.”
The Oculus Rift goes on general release next year.
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers