Facebook Loses Virtual Reality Court Case: $500 Million

Despite the jury rejecting trade-secret theft claims, Facebook will pay $500 million to ZeniMax Media. ZeniMax claimed this theft lead to the development of the Oculus Rift virtual reality technology. Technology that is setting Facebook up to become the leader in the virtual reality field.

ZeniMax Media took Facebook to court after it’s acquisition of Oculus Rift. They claim that previous employee John Carmac stole vital code when he left them to join Oculus. Carmac admitted to bringing information such as code and emails to his new role. He became Chief Technology Officer at Occulus in 2013.

Mark Zuckerberg took to the Dallas court’s witness stand for 5 hours on Wednesday, February 1st 2017. Whilst not a defendant, he felt it necessary to state his perspective. He deemed the ZeniMax claims typical, that companies always come out of the woodwork to stake a claim. Facebook’s Lawyer Beth Wilkinson agreed and stated that ZeniMax’s motivation was regret.

Zuckerberg was adamant that the claims of trade-secret theft were false. And Wilkinson reminded the jury that in 2013 ZeniMax had stopped developing virtual reality. They only sought to sue once the acquisition by Facebook had taken place. They could see the success and were angry and jealous. ZeniMax felt embarrassed that they missed an opportunity.

Facebook’s purchase of Oculus Rift enabled them to take the lead in the virtual reality market. They have raced ahead of competitors such as Sony, Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google.

The virtual reality market will likely be worth $84 billion by 2020. ZeniMax may have brought this case only because they have missed a piece of this pie. Initially ZeniMax had sought to sue Facebook for $2 billion.