Free for a Fee

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.