A US jury on Wednesday ordered Facebook and creators of its Oculus Rift to pay $500 million in damages to gaming software firm ZeniMax for theft of intellectual property.
You may soon be able to watch Facebook videos from television screen
Oculus Rift is a virtual reality headset developed and manufactured by Oculus VR, which Facebook purchased in 2014.
ZeniMax had filed a lawsuit claiming its virtual reality technology was stolen and alleged that Oculus founder Palmer Luckey and his colleagues developed Oculus Rift using source code illegally obtained from ZeniMax.
ZeniMax, the Maryland-based US media company that develops and publishes video games, had also said that Oculus' VR device was "primitive" until John Carmack, who previously worked as a ZeniMax employee, joined Oculus and improved on the Oculus Rift device using his knowledge from his previous work.
According to court documents, the Texas jury found Oculus guilty of copyright infringement, failure to comply with a non-disclosure agreement, and misuse of Oculus trademarks ("false designation").
Oculus said it would appeal the ruling."The heart of this case was about whether Oculus stole ZeniMax's trade secrets, and the jury found decisively in our favor. We're obviously disappointed by a few other aspects of today's verdict, but we are undeterred," the company told CNBC. "We look forward to filing our appeal and eventually putting this litigation behind us."
Earlier, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had testified in court that he was not aware of the intellectual property claims between Oculus and ZeniMax.
