Facebook has been ordered to pay compensation costs of US$500m (€462.7m, £394m) after a US court ruled that the company’s Oculus Rift virtual reality headset was created unlawfully.
Zenimax Media, owner of games studio id Software was seeking damages worth US$2bn (€1.87bn, £1.62bn) after alleging that its early innovations were copied when Palmer Luckey created the Oculus Rift headset.
The jury awarded the sum to Zenimax, judging that Oculus had violated a non-disclosure agreement in the early days of the technology’s development, but that it was not guilty of misappropriating trade secrets.
The lawsuit centred around games designer John Carmack, who co-founded id and for a brief period of time was working for both id and Oculus before leaving the former completely in November 2013.
Zenimax accused Carmack of sharing intellectual property with Oculus while at id, later taking the software code he was working on with him. Speaking at the trial, Tony Sammi, lawyer for Zenimax called the situation “one of the biggest technology heists ever”.
The total figure is split into several different fines – US$200m (€185m, £157.6m) for violating the NDA, US$50m (€46.3m, £39.4m) for copyright infringement and US$150m (€138.8m, £118.2m) against former Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe for false designation.
"We are pleased that the jury in our case in the US District Court in Dallas has awarded Zenimax US$500m for defendants' unlawful infringement of our copyrights and trademarks," said Zenimax chief executive Robert Altman.
In a statement, Oculus said it was "disappointed" and that it would be appealing against the ruling.
