Mark Zuckerberg testified today in Occulus’s case against Zenimax Media. Facebook’s CEO and founder was called up in a Dallas courtroom to answer the charges of property theft and destruction of evidence that have been laid upon Occulus.
In case you have not been following the developments of late, here is a quick refresher. Facebook acquired Oculus in 2014 and since then, the company has been acting the part of the social media giant’s VR arm. Oculus has also produced the groundbreaking technologies since after its acquisition, including the Oculus Rift headsets.
Enter Zenimax Media. The firm has slapped Oculus with a lawsuit in which it claims that Oculus managed to build itself up on the basis of technology that it “stole” from Zenimax. As for how the theft occurred, well, thats a pretty interesting tale of its own. Apparently, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey solicited the aid of employees of ZeniMax-owned games company id Software.
The employees who helped Palmer included John Carmack, who along with some of his colleagues, helped the Oracle founder build his Rift VR headset. Carmack even later joined Oculus as its CTO, once his term with Zenimax was over. The media company also alleges that Carmack took along stolen intellectual property and shared it freely with the Oculus team, leading to the formation of the technology we see today.
So basically, Zenimax is stating that Oculus wouldn’t be anywhere had it not stolen the company’s intellectual property. And hence the lawsuit, which has put $2 Billion on the line.
However, Zenimax will have to win the lawsuit first, which it won’t, if Facebook CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg has its way.
Zuckerberg was present in the courts today and promptly waved aside the claims made by Zenimax. As per a transcript made by NYTimes reporter Mike Isaac, Zuckerberg said:
It is pretty common when you announce a big deal or do something that all kinds of people just kind of come out of the woodwork and claim that they just own some portion of the deal. Like most people in the court I’ve never even heard of ZeniMax before — I know that our legal team would look into this and examine this but they aren’t going to take a lot of my time on something they don’t think is credible.
Meanwhile, this is just the beginning of what could be a protracted battle between the two companies. However, if Zuckerberg’s court statements are anything to go by, he doesn’t seem to be overly worried.