Oculus Responds to Zenimax’s Claim of Intellectual Property Theft

Oculus has just released a response to the proprietary technology theft claim made by Zenimax a few days ago. Here is the full press release:

“We are disappointed but not surprised by Zenimax’s actions and we will prove that all of its claims are false. In the meantime, we would like to clarify a few key points:

• There is not a line of Zenimax code or any of its technology in any Oculus products. 
• John Carmack did not take any intellectual property from Zenimax.
• Zenimax has misstated the purposes and language of the Zenimax non-disclosure agreement that Palmer Luckey signed. 
• A key reason that John permanently left Zenimax in August of 2013 was that Zenimax prevented John from working on VR, and stopped investing in VR games across the company.
• Zenimax canceled VR support for Doom 3 BFG when Oculus refused Zenimax’s demands for a non-dilutable equity stake in Oculus. 
• Zenimax did not pursue claims against Oculus for IP or technology, Zenimax has never contributed any IP or technology to Oculus, and only after the Facebook deal was announced has Zenimax now made these claims through its lawyers.
• Despite the fact that the full source code for the Oculus SDK is available online (developer.oculusvr.com), Zenimax has never identified any ‘stolen’ code or technology.”

My Take

To me, Oculus has made some very potent and interesting statements about Zenimax’s claims. The nail in the coffin seems that the entire source code for Oculus is available online and Zenimax has yet to identify any stolen code or technology.

Zenimax’s actions seem a bit sketchy to me, especially since they only decided to take action after the Facebook deal.

What are your thoughts on this?