The long running, protracted legal affair between ZeniMax Media (the owners of Bethesda and id Software) and Facebook and Oculus over the latter allegedly using proprietary VR technical information of the latter’s has come to an end. Today, ZeniMax Media announced that the two companies had settled out of court, in exchange for ZeniMax dropping all claims.
In a statement which made the announcement, ZeniMax CEO Robert Altman also noted that the company will always engage in litigation when necessary to defend its intellectual property.
“We are pleased that a settlement has been reached and are fully satisfied by the outcome,” said Altman. “While we dislike litigation, we will always vigorously defend against any infringement or misappropriation of our intellectual property by third parties.”
The case was basically revolving around former id mastermind John Carmack apparently having worked on some VR tech and concepts while in ZeniMax’s employee, and on their payroll, which he then proceeded to take to Oculus with him when he joined. It was likely that ZeniMax was going to win the proceedings, especially because a court already ruled in their favor, causing Oculus to take the case to appeals, which I suspect is one of the reasons that Facebook may have wanted to settle.
