Monday, May 5, 2014

Oculus VR Responds To ZeniMax Claims Over 'Key Technology' Allegedly ... - Headlines & Global News

By Zulai Serrano z.serrano@hngn.com | May 05, 2014 03:23 PM EDT

Oculus Rift

ZeniMax claims Oculus Rift allegedly uses technology created by their employees. (Photo : Flick/ Sergey Galyonkin)

Oculus VR has addressed allegations from ZeniMax claiming the tech company is using "key technology" from their Oculus Rift, according to Mashable.

ZeniMax, the owner of Bethesda Game Studios, reportedly contacted Facebook and Oculus over alleged ownership of the technology.  Facebook acquired the company in a $2 billion deal this year.

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ZeniMax claims their former employee, Oculus's CTO John Carmack, took their intellectual property and applied it to the Oculus VR tech.  However, Carmack claims he did not take any code he produced fro ZeniMax with him to Oculus.

Oculus released the following statement in response to ZeniMax's claims:

We are disappointed but not surprised by ZeniMax's actions and we will prove that all of its claims are false. In the meantime, we would like to clarify a few key points:

--There is not a line of ZeniMax code or any of its technology in any Oculus products.
--John Carmack did not take any intellectual property from ZeniMax.
--ZeniMax has misstated the purposes and language of the ZeniMax non-disclosure agreement that Palmer Luckey signed.
--A key reason that John permanently left ZeniMax in August of 2013 was that ZeniMax prevented John from working on VR, and stopped investing in VR games across the company.
--ZeniMax canceled VR support for Doom 3 BFG when Oculus refused ZeniMax's demands for a non-dilutable equity stake in Oculus.
--ZeniMax did not pursue claims against Oculus for IP or technology, ZeniMax has never contributed any IP or technology to Oculus, and only after the Facebook deal was announced has ZeniMax now made these claims through its lawyers.
--Despite the fact that the full source code for the Oculus SDK is a! vailable online (developer.oculusvr.com), ZeniMax has never identified any 'stolen' code or technology.

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Source : http://www.hngn.com/articles/30528/20140505/oculus-vr-responds-to-zenimax-claims-over-key-technology-allegedly-being-used-for-rift-headset.htm