Former John Carmack employer ZeniMax released a statement outlining the case lawyers intend to make in court against Facebook, Oculus and its management.
We briefly covered some quotable moments from Carmack’s time answering questions last week, though our writer on the ground wasn’t able to bring in electronics so we do not have a recording to use or share. As we wrote previously, the defense for Oculus is expected to weigh heavily on showing the jury that the startup designed all the components of the first Rift development kit (DK1), and developed its own software development kit without software or hardware from ZeniMax.
Now we have a statement from ZeniMax more plainly expressing its objectives for the case:
With the start of the trial of our case in Federal District Court in Dallas against Defendants Facebook, Oculus and its management, ZeniMax and id Software welcome the opportunity to present substantial evidence of the Defendants’ misappropriation of our Virtual Reality (VR) intellectual property. That evidence includes the theft of trade secrets and highly confidential information, including computer code. ZeniMax will also present evidence of the Defendants’ intentional destruction of evidence to cover up their wrongdoing. ZeniMax and id Software are the visionary developers of breakthrough VR technology, and look forward to the vindication of our claims.
We’ve seen it reported that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected in court when the case resumes Tuesday, and we will follow as it continues. We’ve also reached out to Facebook for an updated statement, but last week we received the following from Oculus about the case:
We’re eager to present our case in court. Oculus and its founders have invested a wealth of time and money in VR because we believe it can fundamentally transform the way people interact and communicate. We’re disappointed that another company is using wasteful litigation to attempt to take credit for technology that it did not have the vision, expertise, or patience to build.
