ZeniMax sues Samsung over Gear VR tech

Was this headset using proprietary secrets stolen from ZeniMax?

After winning a $500 million judgement against Oculus over the development of the company's virtual reality technology, id Software parent ZeniMax Media is now going after Oculus partner Samsung. In a federal lawsuit filed late last week in the Northern District of Texas, the company says that Samsung's Gear VR headset, widely advertised as "powered by Oculus," benefited from technology that was "misappropriated by Oculus" from ZeniMax under a non-disclosure agreement.

Much of the complaint reiterates arguments ZeniMax made in its initial lawsuit against Oculus: that Oculus founder Palmer Luckey would not have been able to develop his VR technology without proprietary information and help that id's John Carmack gave "in violation of his employment agreement" and an NDA, that Carmack intentionally destroyed evidence to "cover his tracks," and that code that ended up in the Oculus software was originally developed at ZeniMax.

But the new lawsuit extends the allegations to say that Carmack's proprietary information was also key to letting Oculus "secretly develop a mobile software development kit ("Mobile SDK") and related software for the Samsung Gear VR." According to ZeniMax, this Mobile SDK uses ZeniMax's trade secrets and copyrighted code, and it was continually developed despite a "cease-and-desist" letter sent during the original Oculus trial.

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