Oculus VR, a startup that develops virtual reality and is Facebook's latest acquisition, has been accused of swiping ideas from ZeniMax.
Likely looking to get a piece of the $2 billion Facebook paid for Oculus, the video game publisher has claimed that Oculus Chief Technology Officer John Carmack stole intellectual property from ZeniMax, PCMag.com reported.
ZeniMax accused Carmack last week of taking its ideas to Oculus when the game designer and former ZeniMax employee left the Maryland-based company.
Oculus officials say the virtual reality headset-maker stole nothing from ZeniMax, issuing statements on Monday that "not a line" of ZeniMax code made its way into Oculus technology.
"We are disappointed but not surprised by ZeniMax's actions and we will prove that all of its claims are false," a spokesman said in a Monday statement quoted by PCMag.
GameSpot reported a list of key points from Oculus that potentially invalidate ZeniMax's claims. According to Oculus, Carmack quit ZeniMax in August 2013 because the company prevented him from working on VR. Oculus also accused ZeniMax of misstating the purposes and language of a nondisclosure agreement that Oculus founder Palmer Luckey signed with ZeniMax.
No work I have ever done has been patented. Zenimax owns the code that I wrote, but they don't own VR.
— John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) May 1, 2014
The company noted that the Oculus software development kit full source code is available online, but ZeniMax has never pointed out any stolen lines of code or technology and does not own VR.
"ZeniMax did not pursue claims against Oculus for IP or technology, ZeniMax has never contributed any IP or technology to Oculus, and only after the Facebook deal was announced has ZeniMax now made these claims through its lawyers," an Oculus spokesman said.
Oculus and ZeniMax were in contention back in 2012, when an Oculus campaign on Kickstarter brought in $2.4 million, PCMag reported via The Wall Street Journal. Despite six months of negotiations, the two companies couldn't reach a resolution.
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