ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks and id Software, and Facebook have settled their lawsuit concerning the development of the Oculus VR headset, Zenimax announced this morning. The agreement closes a four-and-a-half year battle in which Zenimax alleged that id co-founder John Carmack provided trade secrets to Oculus.
In a brief statement from ZeniMax, the company said it had agreed to settle the litigation but not the amount to be paid. ZeniMax originally won a $500 million judgment from a federal jury in Texas in February 2017, with Oculus founder Palmer Luckey on the hook for $50 million of that, and former CEO Brendan Iribe liable for $150 million.
A federal judge later halved that award and ZeniMax appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. This settlement ends that appeal. Robert Altman, the chairman and chief executive of Zenimax, said the company is “fully satisfied by the outcome.”
Polygon has reached out to Facebook for comment.
In its Feb. 1, 2017 verdict, a jury for U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas said Oculus did not misappropriate trade secrets, as ZeniMax had contended. The judgment was more based on Luckey’s failure to comply with a non-disculosure agreement he had signed with ZeniMax concerning virtual reality technology ZeniMax developed and owned.
Carmack left id in 2013 for Oculus VR, where he is now the chief technology officer. In its original complaint, ZeniMax said that he and about six former ZeniMax employees who also joined Oculus built the Rift using ZeniMax’s copyrighted code. Carmack later sued ZeniMax, alleging the company hadn’t paid the $22.5 million it owed him when the publisher acquired id in 2009. Carmack, in October, said both sides had released their claims against each other.
In May 2017, ZeniMax sued Samsung, also in the Northern District of Texas (id is headquartered in the Dallas area), alleging that the Gear VR was also developed using id Software trade secrets because it relies on the Oculus code at the heart of the original suit. At the end of 2017, the judge in that case granted Samsung’s motion for a stay in the proceedings, and closed the case, because it concerned the outcome of the ZeniMax vs. Oculus suit.
