This isn’t exactly anything new- every time a pioneer comes on to the scene with a new idea, a lawsuit follows. In the gaming market alone, we have multiple instances of this happening, from Sony being sued by Nintendo for the original PlayStation, to Nintendo themselves being sued for the various technologies they introduced in the DS, Wii, and 3DS.
It stands to reason, then, that a similar set of events would also unfold for virtual reality, which is the new poster boy for the next step in games evolution. And that’s exactly what has happened, as Oculus founder Palmer Luckey is now being sued by Total Recall Technologies, accused of taking confidential information he learned while under contract and using it to develop his own device, the Oculus Rift, which will now obviously compete in the market with any product that TRT bring out.
According to TRT, Luckey and the company were in active contact regarding the development of a head mounted VR display as recently as 2012- dialog that, allegedly, netted him enough information to make his own riff on the product.
“Without informing Total Recall Technologies … Luckey took the information he learned from the Partnership, as well as the prototype that he built for the TRT using design features and other confidential information and materials supplied by the Partnership, and passed it off to others as his own,” the suit says.
Whereas I won’t be taking sides on the issue, not just yet, my question is: why did these guys not sue earlier? Oculus Rift was announced years ago, its product development has been open for a while now, they had plenty of time to figure out whether their product had actually been ripped off. So why did they wait this long?
Whether or not there is more to this than meets the eye remains to be seen. We will keep you posted.
