Facebook loses Oculus VR intellectual property lawsuit to Bethesda owner Zenimax

Facebook ordered to pay $500m to Zenimax on top of the $2bn it already paid for Oculus Rift

Facebook has been ordered to pay $500m to Zenimax, the owner of games developer and publisher Bethesda.

It follows a lawsuit over claims that the Oculus virtual reality technology, acquired by Facebook for $2bn in 2014, is based on intellectual property originally developed by Bethesda. Zenimax also claimed for copyright and trademark infringement by Facebook.

The company sued Facebook because, it argued, Kickstarter-funded Oculus had misappropriated Bethesda's intellectual property when the two companies, led by Bethesda employee John Carmack, worked on virtual reality together.

"Carmack secretly and illegally copied thousands of documents containing Zenimax's intellectual property from his computer at Zenimax to a USB storage device, which he wrongfully took with him to Oculus," it said at the time.

Oculus, not surprisingly, is upset about the decision. The company lost, in part, because Oculus founder Palmer Luckey was also found to have broken a non-disclosure agreement with Zenimax that he signed when the two companies worked together. The company also claims that Luckey infringed Zenimax copyrights and trademarks.

"We are pleased that the jury in our case in the US District Court in Dallas has awarded Zenimax $500m for the defendants' unlawful infringement of our copyrights and trademarks," said Zenimax CEO Robert Altman.

Computing asked Facebook in the UK for comment, although none was forthcoming at the time of publication.

Before the case, however, Facebook claimed to be confident of winning. "We're eager to present our case in court," a spokesperson for Oculus told the BBC.

"Oculus and its founders have invested a wealth of time and money in virtual reality because we believe it can fundamentally transform the way people interact and communicate.

"We're disappointed that another company is using wasteful litigation to attempt to take credit for technology that it did not have the vision, expertise, or patience to build," the spokesperson added.