Total Recall Technologies (TRT) has had its lawsuit against Oculus VR and its founder Palmer Luckey dismissed, following a ruling last year that the company may have a case for breach of contract - but on a filing technicality, rather than the merits of the case itself.
Following its acquisition by deep-pocketed social networking giant Facebook in 2014 Oculus VR has courted a series of lawsuits alleging breach of contract, theft of intellectual property, and copyright infringement. The biggest of these cases centre around two figures: Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus VR and the public face of the company during its record-breaking crowdfunding campaigns prior to its acquisition by Facebook, and id Software co-founder John Carmack. The case against Carmack was found in favour of plaintiff Zenimax in February, with a jury finding Oculus guilty of copyright infringement but innocent of the theft of trade secrets; the case against Luckey, however, may never see the inside of a courtroom.
In January last year US District Judge William Alsup told Total Recall Technologies to proceed with a claim of breach of contract against Palmer Luckey, following the company's accusations that Luckey was hired to develop a prototype head-mounted display by the company in 2011 - prior to the launch of Luckey's crowdfunding campaign for a head-mounted display which bears no small resemblance to the device TRT hired Luckey to design and build. According to TRT, Luckey signed a non-disclosure agreement and agreed to providing the company with 'exclusive rights to [Luckey's headset] design unless we decide not to use it' - agreements Luckey broke when he went on to develop the Oculus Rift headset, TRT claimed in its filing.
Despite Judge Alsup's initial recommendation, though, he has now has thrown out the company's case - though under the fact that one of the two people behind TRT, Thomas Seidl, has refused to authorise the lawsuit, rather than on the merits or otherwise of the case itself.
Seidl, who founded TRT with Ron Igra, was responsible for the written agreement for a prototype head-mounted virtual reality display system around which the lawsuit centres. When Oculus VR was sold to Facebook, Igra was the one who wanted to sue Luckey for alleged breach of contract; Seidl refused, and Igra filed suit in Hawaii against Seidl in an effort to compel his business partner to authorise a lawsuit pitting TRT against Oculus VR and its owner Facebook.
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks