Oculus

The Oculus company was founded by the pioneer of virtual reality Palmer of Lucky in 2012. Its most known product is a helmet of virtual reality Oculus Rift, funds for which Palmer raised on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. Intending to collect $250 thousand, as a result he received $2.4 million. Also Oculus laid a hand to creation of a Samsung Gear VR helmet which was developed in partnership with Samsung for the Samsung Galaxy smartphones.

After merger of Facebook in 2014 Oculus faced a number of difficulties. The same year the American game publishing house ZeniMax which accused the company of use of its intellectual property during creation of an Oculus Rift helmet filed a lawsuit against it. The claim said that technologies were stolen by the former employee of ZeniMax John Carmack who passed to work in Oculus. In February, 2017 the court partially accepted ZeniMax claims, having obliged to pay Oculus to publishing house in total $500 million.

In March, 2017 Oculus was left by its founder Palmer Lucky forced to leave, apparently, a post in connection with political scandal. During the last pre-election race of Lucky invested $10 thousand in Nimble America company which created the caricatures representing in unattractive light of the candidate for president Hillary Clinton. When it became clear, Lucky faced sharp criticism in media and a squall of insults on the Internet.

2017

Oculus closes Story Studio

The Oculus company closes the Story Studio – studio which is engaged in creation of video in a format of virtual reality. The vice president of Oculus Jason Rubin reported about it in May, 2017 in the blog of the company. Having begun work in 2015, Story Studio made generally subject short animated films^[1].

Oculus is a part of Facebook which redeemed it in 2014 for $2 billion. The reasons of the decision on closing of Story Studio are not reported. Is going to employ the staff of Facebook studio at other positions in Oculus. Closing of Story Studio followed leaving Oculus of the founder of the company Palmer of Lucky (Palmer Luckey) at the end of March, 2017 at once.

In further Oculus she intends to finance creation of content for devices of virtual reality by third-party developers. It will still be short animated films for a helmet of virtual reality Oculus Rift. Expected investment volume is $50 million.

Facebook is caught on theft of technologies for half a billion dollars

The court of Dallas in the American State of Texas rendered a verdict in the claim of the ZeniMax company specializing in release of computer games to the belonging Facebook of Oculus company which igrodela accused of theft of technologies. Judges obliged to pay Oculus ZeniMax of $500 million^[2].

According to the famous founder of Doom and Quake John Carmack appeared Bloomberg, in the center of scandal. In 2009 the idSoftware company in which the programmer worked was purchased by ZeniMax, and in 2013 John Carmack left from there, having passed into Oculus to a position of the technical director.

According to ZeniMax which was not disproved later also by Carmack for new work he took with himself from a former position technical data, including the computer code, technologies of virtual reality Oculus which allowed to develop afterwards.

Facebook purchased Oculus for $2 billion in 2014, and same year ZeniMax demanded from the company of a material satisfaction (at the same time the head of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg was not a defendant in case). As notes Polygon, ZeniMax then accused Oculus of stealing of a trade secret, and the lawyer of the company Anthony Sammi called the event "robbery" and said that Oculus should pay ZeniMax of $2 billion compensation and $4 billion as penalties.

In turn the lawyer of Oculus Beth Wilkinson told that the claim of the company is based "not on the facts, and on envy and rage". Earlier representatives of Oculus also noted that a claim was submitted after acquisition of their company by giant Facebook that for ZeniMax "chance it became easy to receive money".

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