It has been more than two and a half years since <a href=http://www.gamereactor.eu/news/121034/Zenimax+files+against+Carmack+over+VR/">Zenimax filed lawsuits against Oculus and John Carmack over the Oculus Rift</a>, and now the trail has started. Naturally this has ensured that the situation is more heated than ever before.
According to a Zenimax representative, the $2 billion lawsuit now doesn't just claim that id Software co-founder John Carmack stole several documents prior to his departure to Oculus, but that Oculus VR deliberately destroyed evidence in an attempt to cover their tracks:
"With the start of the trial of our case in Federal District Court in Dallas against defendants Facebook, Oculus and its management, ZeniMax and id Software welcome the opportunity to present substantial evidence of the defendants' misappropriation of our Virtual Reality (VR) intellectual property. That evidence includes the theft of trade secrets and highly confidential information, including computer code. ZeniMax will also present evidence of the defendants' intentional destruction of evidence to cover up their wrongdoing. ZeniMax and id Software are the visionary developers of breakthrough VR technology, and look forward to the vindication of our claims."
Zenimax really sounds confident in their case, but so does Oculus. Last week they issued a statement to Upload VR calling the lawsuit "wasteful litigation to attempt to take credit for technology that it did not have the vision, expertise, or patience to build".
These kinds of lawsuits rarely makes it into a courtroom, which clearly shows that neither parties plan to back down in the near future. This is demonstrated by the fact that Polygon has learned that Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg himself will testify today.
It'll be interesting to see how it all ends, and what details see the light of day the next three weeks. We've already gotten a funny quote from the questioning of John Carmack. According to Upload VR's representative in the courtroom, Carmack had this to say when asked why a specific MacBook never got wiped:
"I am not a Mac user unless under duress."