Oculus catches a break as TRT lawsuit is dismissed

In its quest to embrace a virtual world, Oculus has had to spend a lot of time navigating the legal world.

Today, they seemed to have caught a good break. A lawsuit filed against Oculus by Total Recall Technologies (TRT) was dismissed by a northern California court.

This was the main other looming lawsuit surrounding the founding of the virtual reality headset company that Facebook acquired in March of 2014 for about $2 billion.

TRT was another head-mounted display company that Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey met with during the course of eventually developing his own head-mounted display.

Total Recall Technologies contacted Luckey in December of 2010 to seek his help in designing a virtual reality headset with parts paid for by TR. TRT co-founder Thomas Seidl asserted in communications that he wanted “exclusive rights to your design unless we decide not to use it.” After completing an initial build and receiving feedback for further improvements, Luckey ceased working with the company and did not send back the prototype though it seems no one at TRT asked for it back.

According to the lawsuit, Luckey signed an NDA during his meeting with the company. Total Recall Technologies filed suit in May of 2015, alleging a breach of contract on Luckey’s part.

In a statement given to TechCrunch, an Oculus spokesperson said, “We are pleased with the Court’s ruling to dismiss TRT’s entire case with prejudice. Our commitment to VR is the same. We are focused on expanding and pursuing our vision for this transformative technology.”

Last month, Oculus was ordered to pay ZeniMax Media $500 million in damages for copyright infringement and violations of and NDA. Yesterday, Oculus CTO John Carmack filed suit against ZeniMax Media for $22.5 million in unpaid earnings stemming from the 2009 sale of his game studio id Software.