Inventor of Oculus Rift sued for fraud

Back in August of 2012, 19-year-old Palmer Luckey took the gaming community by storm when he launched a Kickstarter campaign for the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset. Over the course of the month-long campaign, he raised over $2.4 million , and less than 2 years later, his company was acquired by Facebook as part of a $2 billion acquisition.

Luckey's rapid climb to success, however, hasn't been without controversy. Many backers of his Kickstarter campaign felt that the company's sale to Facebook was a violation of their trust, and now he faces an intellectual property lawsuit claiming that he violated a confidentiality agreement by developing the Rift.

Back in 2011, Total Recall, a technology company based in Hawaii, hired Luckey to develop a prototype virtual reality headset. They claim that, when he launched his Kickstarter campaign the following year, he used feedback he gathered while developing said prototype to pass their product off as his own.

A similar case was levied against Oculus VR last May, when game developer Zenimax Media accused Luckey of using their intellectual property in developing the Oculus Rift. John Carmack, the co-founder of Id Software, took an interest in the Luckey's product and provided both technology and experience that Zenimax claims was crucial to the Rift's development. As Carmack was employed by Zenimax at the time, they claim that his contributions to the Rift are company property. A trial is scheduled for November 16, 2015.

Oculus' representatives have called both cases "meritless."

Cases like this can take months, if not years to fully play out. If you believe that your intellectual property copyrights have been violated, contact an experienced business attorney as soon as possible.

Categorised in: Entertainment Law, Intellectual Property Law

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