Following a prominent lawsuit between ZeniMax and Facebook/Oculus which resulted in a $500 million award to ZeniMax, the company is now seeking an injunction to prevent Oculus from continuing to use code that was found by the jury to infringe upon ZeniMax’s copyright.
According to a report by Reuters, ZeniMax filed papers on Thursday, at the same court where the early 2017 trial was held, which seek an injunction that would prevent distribution of the VR code that was found to infringe on ZeniMax’s copyright. According to the filing, ZeniMax’s proposed injunction would include core software that makes the Oculus ecosystem work, including the company’s PC SDK for Rift and Mobile SDK for Gear VR:
Defendant Oculus is permanently enjoined, on a worldwide basis, from using, marketing, selling, distributing, modifying, servicing, copying, or offering for sale or license any products, in whole or in part, that utilize in any form or for any purpose 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.
The filing also appears to indicate that ZeniMax wants the original campaign video for the 2012 Oculus Kickstarter to be barred from use, which includes footage of John Carmack, a key figure in the lawsuit, demonstrating a very early Rift prototype at E3 2012.
The company argues that the $500 million (of a requested $4 billion) in damages that the court awarded ZeniMax is “insufficient to remedy” the damages, and that precedent shows that an injunction is the proper motion when copyright infringement has been established.
Speaking to Reuters, Mark Romeo, an intellectual property lawyer not involved in the case, said the injunction, if granted, would put an “incredible amount of pressure on Facebook to enter into some sort of settlement.”
A spokesperson for Oculus said the company was continuing with its plan to appeal the original judgement, which the spokesperson called “legally flawed and factually unwarranted,” according to the Reuters report.
The initial lawsuit stemmed from (among other claims) Oculus’ alleged use of code developed by John Carmack, who was at the time an employee of Id Software, a subsidiary of ZeniMax. Carmack eventually joined Oculus as the company’s Chief Technical Officer. The lawsuit further alleged breaches of a non-disclosure agreement between Oculus founder Palmer Luckey and Id Software. For more, see this analysis on the lawsuits $500 million verdict.
