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Facebook Oculus Lawsuit Ends: Facebook To Pay $500 Million, Hardly Denting Facebook’s Soaring Revenues [VIDEO]

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The almost-three years Facebook Oculus lawsuit finally reached a verdict that required Facebook to pay $500 million to ZeniMax. The lawsuit is immaterial to Facebook with its advertising revenues soaring by 51 percent and Mark Zuckerberg's announcement of continued work on pushing for the VR technology.

The jury concluded that Oculus' CEO Palmer Luckey violated the Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) with games company ZeniMax. For this reason, Oculus will pay $200 million for NDA violation, $50 million for copyright infringement and another $50 million for false designation. Moreover, Luckey has been ordered to pay $50 million and former Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe will also shell out $150 million for false designation.

Back in May 2014, ZeniMax sued the VR startup just after it was bought by Facebook. Oculus was charged with using the code of ZeniMax in creating its Rift VR headset.

ID Software executive John Carmack developed a prototype of the company's flagship headset. He soon became the new chief technology officer of Oculus, but before that, he was exchanging emails with Luckey. ID Software's parent company is ZeniMax.

ZeniMax attorney argued that Oculus stole trade secrets and was asking for $2 billion in compensation and another $2 billion in damages. The jury decided that Oculus did not steal trade secrets, but only violated the NDA, The Guardian reported.

Facebook attorney, Beth Wilkinson, revealed their plans to make an appeal while expressing the company's continued support for VR as unchanged. Zuckerberg in an ambush interview after the court verdict was announced echoed the sentiment even asking for investors to be patient as returns on the VR investment might "take quite a while," according to CNBC.

Meanwhile, Facebook advertising revenues are going strong with a fourth quarter record rising by 51 percent. The mobile advertising business accounts for 84 percent of the total revenues, hardly affected by the bad publicity the company received over the fake news. With revenues doubling, the $500 million penalty hardly makes a dent on the popular social media network's financials.

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