ZeniMax Sues Samsung For The Gear VR Headset
May 17th, 2017: According to ZeniMax's claims, the Gear VR headset infringes its property rights in the same way as the Oculus Rift did. The lawsuit alleges that the Gear VR headset is "based upon ZeniMax's intellectual property and includes information obtained by Samsung from Oculus, Luckey, and Carmack in violation of the NDA, ZeniMax's copyrights, and Carmack's employment agreement."
The lawsuit also says "On July 31, 2013, Carmack brought a former ZeniMax employee and friend, Matt Hooper ('Hooper'), who had been fired by ZeniMax, back into id Software's offices after hours to 'talk about Oculus.' Carmack was aware of the comprehensive security measures ZeniMax had to protect the confidentiality of its intellectual property, security measures Carmack knowingly and intentionally violated,"
The lawsuit by ZeniMax also includes the following "After providing Hooper access to the locked premises, Carmack left Hooper unattended, free to examine ZeniMax confidential materials, at which point Hooper went alone into offices where ZeniMax maintained and stored confidential information. Later that night, Hooper emailed his contacts at Oculus disclosing that he and Carmack formulated an 'attack plan' for the mobile VR work that they would undertake together at Oculus, and which Oculus would subsequently provide to Samsung"
The suit also contains the following statement from Carmack that puts Samsung in a rather sticky situation "Carmack confirmed this in later sworn testimony, when he admitted that he merely 'reimplemented' the same copyrighted code he had created while an employee of ZeniMax when he created the Oculus VR software used in the Samsung Gear VR."
ZeniMax has demanded a trial suit against Samsung and currently seeks damages for infringement of properties, royalties, punitive damages, court costs and so on and so forth.
