Facebook Has Been Fined $500 Million For Stealing VR Technology

Court in the United States fined Facebook $500 million after losing a legal battle. Jury found that Oculus VR which was bought by Facebook in 2014 stole computer code from the video game developer ZeniMax and its Rift Headset.

Mark Zukerberg founder of Facebook appeared in the case and testified the transfer of ZeniMax’s former employee John Carmack to become a technology chief in Oculus. John Carmack also questioned by Jury put forward some strong evidences against Facebook.

However, Mark Zukerberg outrightly rejected the claims of Game developers and said their claims are false.

Judges came to the conclusion after long debated legal aspects of the case that Oculus which is now owned by Facebook has stolen the technology, violated the non-discloser agreements and infringed copyrighted material which solely belongs to ZeniMax.

Both co-founders of Oculus were ordered to pay $200 million out of $500 million, the rest $300 million has to be paid by Facebook.

Oculus however, rejected the claims but could not prove it in the court they said, “Oculus products are entirely built with Oculus technology”

After the decision Facebook reported its 4^th quarter profits, which were almost doubled to $3.6 billion. Facebook said they will hit the target of 2 billion users in the coming June.

Facebook is also focusing on video advertising as well as creating original video platform which is a big threat for Google and Youtube.

Related: Facebook Focusing On Video Advertising Through TV Boxes