ZeniMax Files Injunction to Stop Oculus Sales

Following its $500 million lawsuit against Oculus over alleged stolen virtual reality tech, ZeniMax has filed an injunction to stop the Facebook-owned company from selling its VR headsets. While Oculus and Facebook dispute the charge – Oculus CTO John Carmack even accused the plaintiff’s expert witness of lying in court – the jury ruled in favour of ZeniMax, for which the plaintiff was awarded $500 million. The damages, though, are not enough, according to Zenimax, as it does not encourage the defendants to cease infringing on the plaintiff’s property.

“The jury’s damage award here, however substantial, is an insufficient incentive for Defendants to cease infringing,” ZeniMax says in the injunction filing. “Just minutes after the jury revealed its verdict, Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg, publicly stated that the jury’s verdict of a half billion dollars was “not material to [Facebook’s] financials.”

According to the ZeniMax filing (via Upload VR), Oculus should be “permanently enjoined, on a worldwide basis, from using…any of the Copyrighted Materials, including but not limited to (i) system software for Oculus PC (including the Oculus PC SDK);  (ii) system software for Oculus Mobile (including the Oculus Mobile  SDK);  (iii) Oculus integration with the Epic Games Unreal Engine; and (iv) Oculus integration with the Unity Technologies Unity Game Engine.”

In response to the injunction, a Facebook spokesperson said:

“ZeniMax’s motion does not change the fact that the verdict was legally flawed and factually unwarranted. We look forward to filing our own motion to set aside the jury’s verdict and, if necessary, filing an appeal that will allow us to put this litigation behind us.”