Image Image Image Image Image Image Image Image Image Image

Oculus VR News | April 25, 2024

Scroll to top

Top

Oculus Fights ZeniMax's Injunction Demands in Court, Judge Calls for End to Legal Battle

Oculus Fights ZeniMax's Injunction Demands in Court, Judge Calls for End to Legal Battle

Image courtesy of: Oculus

FRΛNK R.

After being awarded $500 million earlier this year in its lawsuit against Facebook-owned Oculus, ZeniMax Media was back in court wanting more.

ZeniMax had filed an injunction shortly after the trial to block the sale of any Oculus hardware and software using the disputed VR code that was at the center of the case. On Tuesday, the company asked a South Texas court to grant the injunction or, if not, then it wants Oculus to pay it a 20 percent royalty from all hardware sales for the next 10 years.

According to court documents obtained by Ars Technica, ZeniMax is also seeking an additional $500 million on top of the original judgment already awarded—bringing the total damages to $1 billion. ZeniMax argued that the original amount “is an insufficient incentive for Defendants to cease infringing.”

Oculus is not taken this lightly and has disputed against all of ZeniMax’s new claims. Oculus argues that the original jury ruling was based on an NDA violation that took place years in the past and is not ongoing, and therefore it does not constitute “continuing harm” to ZeniMax. In its own documents filed with the court, Oculus noted that “ZeniMax does not offer any products that compete with Oculus’s virtual-reality platforms and headsets.”

Oculus’ lawyers further argued that the injunction “would serve no one but ZeniMax, who would use it only as leverage to try to extract money from Oculus” and that it “would create a windfall for ZeniMax while detracting from the public’s enjoyment of Oculus’s groundbreaking products.”

U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade, who is hearing the case, has asked Zenimax to be “more specific” in regards to which parts of the current Oculus code infringes on its copyright, according to Law360.

With this ongoing legal battle between ZeniMax and Facebook-owned Oculus now into its third year, the judge encouraged both parties to try to work towards reaching a settlement to put this case to rest, for the good of all.

While the hearing ended without a ruling, Judge Kinkeade said he intends to “resolve the heck out of [this] big, hairy fight” sooner rather than later and has urged ZeniMax and Oculus to quickly settle their differences. If no settlement is reached, you can expect the court to firmly decide the outcome of this case to get both sides to finally move on.