Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is set to stand the stand as a witness in a lawsuit between Zenimax Media and Facebook. The case concerns the social media giant’s acquisition of Oculus; which is said to have built products built on stolen technology.
At the heart of the lawsuit is the actions of Oculus CTO John Carmack, who had previously worked at Zenimax subsidiary Id Software. Carmack has a long list of gaming credentials which includes games like Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein 3D. He was also responsible for creating a VR version of Doom that was originally meant to be a tech demo.
Id and Oculus were in talks to develop a VR gaming product, but the deal fell through after Oculus resisted the idea of Id taking a 20 percent stake in the company. Shortly after the incident, Carmack left to join Oculus.
Zenimax claims that Carmack violated his employment agreement by building the Oculus Rift using technology developed while working at Id. It also alleges that Oculus founder Palmer Luckey did not have the technical skill to actually create the code for the VR headset. For his part, Carmack admits to having copied work emails when he left the company.
Facebook has found itself in this unfortunate position as the lawsuit names it as the defendant for buying Oculus despite knowing of ongoing legal proceedings.
Zenimax is seeking some $2 billion (about RM9 billion) in damages, although Facebook contends that the lawsuit is extremely frivolous. The company had also attempted to shield Zuckerberg from legal proceedings; but the courts dismissed the protest and summoned the Facebook CEO as a witness.
[Source: Business Insider]
