Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg questioned in court for intellectual property theft

Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg appeared in Dallas Court to testify that the Facebook-owned virtual reality company, Oculus Rift, has not stolen the rival’s technology and trade secrets.

Oculus VR was acquired by Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion. Oculus Rift has been accused of stealing trade secrets from Id Software, an American video game developer company.

ZeniMax Media Inc, the Parent company of Id Software filed a lawsuit against Oculus in 2014 amidst the Facebook-Oculus deal. ZeniMax said that Oculus illegally used its intellectual property to develop the VR that includes the Rift headset.

ZeniMmax alleged that Oculus founder Palmer Luckey and Id co-founder John Carmack, who is now chief technical officer at Oculus, tweaked the software that operates the Oculus while Carmack was still under contract at Id and then destroyed evidence of the collaboration.

Mark Zuckerberg was questioned for hours by the attorney. During a heated argument, he said that Oculus technology was not even fully developed when Facebook bought it. The attorney countered,

“Improving on that technology doesn’t make it yours. If you steal my bike, paint it and put a bell on it, does that make it your bike?”

“I’m here because I believe they’re false and it’s important to testify to that…It’s pretty common when you announce a big deal that people just come out of the woodwork and claim they own some part of the deal.” Zuckerberg said.

“We’re disappointed that another company is using wasteful litigation to attempt to take credit for technology that it did not have the vision, expertise or patience to build,” an Oculus spokesperson told the Guardian.

Zuckerberg said that he was interested in virtual reality ever since he was a student and that the company plans to use VR in future too.

Source: Reuters