Major Lawsuit Against Oculus VR Creator To Go Ahead

The headset technology might not be as original as you think.

Palmer Luckey, Oculus VR founder has been brought back to reality (sorry) over a confidentiality agreement signed when he worked for Total Recall Technologies. As reported by Reuters, Recall are claiming that "In 2011 and 2012, Luckey received feedback and information to improve the design of display" during his time with the company, to which he then used "when he launched a Kickstarter campaign for his own head-mounted display called the Oculus Rift". U.S. District Judge William Alsup gave the case the go ahead on contractual terms, but threw out civil claims that included fraud. Oculus VR was bought by Facebook for $2 million in 2014 and is also currently undergoing a separate lawsuit from Bethesda/Fallout parent company Zenimax, who claim intellectual property rights over work by former employee and designer John Carmack, who now works at Oculus. Luckey claims the lawsuit by Total Recall is "A brazen attempt to secure for itself a stake in Oculus VR€™s recent multi-billion dollar acquisition by Facebook", which would make sense considering the amount of money that is on the line, and the fact that there are a two cases ongoing so close to its intended release this April. Cormack also made a good point when defending the company against Zenimax, tweeting "Zenimax owns the code that I wrote, but they don't own VR" and stating that not a single line of code he wrote when working at Zenimax is used with the Oculus Rift - so unpack that one any way you can. With a price tag of $600 and the advent of virtual reality potentially changing the face of gaming forever, everybody involved is trying to get what's theirs. Are you psyched for VR, or is it a 'wait and see'-type deal? Let us know in the comments!
In this post: 
oculus rift
 
Posted On: 
Contributor

I work at a college as a janitor even though I feel like I'm smarter than most of the people who go there. Sometimes I see an equation written on a blackboard like half an equation and I just figure it out. Really though I'm a Journalism graduate so I like to write words and stuff. Getting back into it thanks to WhatCulture! Oh and my best friend is Ben Affleck...