This morning the team over at Oculus VR has responded to the claims by ZeniMax that John Carmack co-founder of id Software, when he joined Oculus VR as their Chief Technology Officer last year, took intellectual property from ZeniMax to help develop the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset.
Last week ZeniMax explained : “ The proprietary technology and know-how Mr. Carmack developed when he was a ZeniMax employee, and used by Oculus, are owned by ZeniMax. Well before the Facebook transaction was announced, Mr. Luckey acknowledged in writing ZeniMax’s legal ownership of this intellectual property. It was further agreed that Mr. Luckey would not disclose this technology to third persons without approval.”
The statement released by Oculus VR this morning states :
“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 available online (developer.oculusvr.com), Zenimax has never identified any ‘stolen’ code or technology.”
We will keep you updated as more developments unfold between Oculus VR, which was just purchased by Facebook for $2 billion and Zenimax.
Source: Destructoid
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