The makers of the Virtual Reality (VR) headset Oculus Rift are facing another lawsuit, Reuters source reports. This time, a Hawaiian-based company by the name of Total Recall Technologies (TRT), stated that Oculus stole the technology that they designed to develop VR headset of their own, and Oculus claimed it as their own.
The lawsuit is aimed towards Oculus, and no others, despite Facebook recent 2$ billion acquisition of the group. According to a source from Reuters, a representative from Facebook has declined to comment on the lawsuit.
The plaintiff claimed to have hired Palmer Luckey (Oculus founder) in 2011, where he was asked to build a prototype head mounted display. Luckey then signed a confidentiality agreement with TRT.
As cited by Techtimes, wrote a legal complaint, saying:
At all relevant times, the information provided to Luckey by TRT was confidential, and TRT expected the information to remain confidential”
Throughout 2011 and 2012, Luckey received feedbacks from various sources and he used that to improved the design of the prototype. However according to the lawsuit, he used the information that he received from the result of the collaboration to help his kickstarter campaign for his own head mounted display, which is known widely now as Oculus Rift.
TRT currently seek compensatory and punitive damages from Luckey. However, they did not disclose how much Luckey and the group need to compensate the damages.
For their legal effort, TRT hired the service of global law firm Quinn Emmanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, which has counted the likes of Google and Samsung as their list of major clients. Luckey is accused primarily of fraud and breach of contract.
Oculus kickstarter started in 2012, and has found various financial supports and backings. The group now has released development kits for developers who wished to develop softwares ahead of its 2016 first-quarter retail release.