Judge Allows Second Lawsuit Against Oculus And Facebook To Move Forward

Total Recall Technologies has filed a lawsuit against Oculus VR, claiming that founder Palmer Luckey took confidential information and passed it off as his own. US District Judge William Alsup recently ruled that the company’s lawsuit could go forward (via GameSpot and Reuters).

The Hawaii-based company’s civil claims of fraud have been thrown out of the lawsuit, however. The suit alleges that Luckey was hired in 2011 to create a prototype virtual reality headset, and that he signed a confidentiality agreement as well.

As Reuters reported last year, “Throughout the latter half of 2011 and into 2012, Luckey received feedback and information to improve the design of the display. However, Luckey used information he learned from his partnership when he launched a Kickstarter campaign for his own head mounted display called the Oculus Rift, according to the lawsuit."

This isn’t the only lawsuit against Oculus. Bethesda parent company Zenimax Media initially sued Oculus and Facebook in 2014, claiming it owns some of the intellectual property and code that is part of the Rift. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was ordered to provide testimony.

Luckey himself has said the lawsuits are opportunistic.