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In the ongoing legal battle between Zenimax and Oculus, the lawsuit now directly accuses John Carmack of theft. Zenimax have amended their complaint against Oculus, the latest in a lawsuit that dates back to May 2014.The suit also directly names Oculus parent company Facebook, with amended charges against the VR company that further detail a key source of conflict: misappropriated Zenimax property. Specifically, the filing now spells out theft allegations against the id Software co-founder and Oculus’ current chief technology officer John Carmack.
“Instead of complying with his contract, during his last days at ZeniMax, he copied thousands of documents from a computer at ZeniMax to a USB storage device,” the amended filing (below) alleges. “He never returned those files or all copies of them after his employment with ZeniMax was terminated. In addition, after Carmack's employment with ZeniMax was terminated, he returned to ZeniMax's premises to take a customized tool for developing VR Technology belonging to ZeniMax that itself is part of ZeniMax's VR technology.”
Further, the suit increases its allegations that Palmer Luckey is not the inventor of contemporary virtual reality. In the original filing, Zenimax states that "Luckey increasingly held himself out to the media and the public as the visionary developer of the Rift’s VR Technology, which had actually been developed by ZeniMax without Luckey’s involvement."
“Instead of complying with his contract, during his last days at ZeniMax, he copied thousands of documents from a computer at ZeniMax to a USB storage device,” the amended filing (below) alleges. “He never returned those files or all copies of them after his employment with ZeniMax was terminated. In addition, after Carmack's employment with ZeniMax was terminated, he returned to ZeniMax's premises to take a customized tool for developing VR Technology belonging to ZeniMax that itself is part of ZeniMax's VR technology.”
Further, the suit increases its allegations that Palmer Luckey is not the inventor of contemporary virtual reality. In the original filing, Zenimax states that "Luckey increasingly held himself out to the media and the public as the visionary developer of the Rift’s VR Technology, which had actually been developed by ZeniMax without Luckey’s involvement."
Zenimax continues to go for the throat with their amended lawsuit.
"Oculus, at Iribe’s direction, disseminated to the press the false and fanciful story that Luckey was the brilliant inventor of VR technology who had developed that technology in his parents’ garage," the new document reads. "In fact, that story was utterly and completely false: Luckey lacked the training, expertise, resources, or know-how to create commercially viable VR technology, his computer programming skills were rudimentary, and he relied on ZeniMax's computer program code and games to demonstrate the prototype Rift. Nevertheless, this fraudulent tale was frequently reported in the media as fact. Luckey increasingly and falsely held himself out to the media and the public as the visionary developer of the Rift’s VR Technology, which had actually been developed by ZeniMax without any substantial contribution from Luckey."
The full amended lawsuit can be read on Scribd, via Game Informer.
I'm sure this won't be the last time we hear about this ongoing legal battle.
That of course is just a conspiracy without evidence, if Zenimax have any to prove Carmack did what he's accused of then this would have been over a long time ago i'd have thought, unless they were waiting for the loss of profits via stolen company assets to build for a really good payday. I'm not against the current truth, that independent Luckey + Carmack invented the Oculus, people invent things all the time, but the accusation does explain maybe the pace at which it was invented.