Judge Deals Major Blow To $500M Oculus Lawsuit Ruling

ZeniMax Media's big win against Oculus has gotten a little smaller. U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade of Dallas has revised the terms of the $500 million result, halving it to $250 million. The judge also rejected ZeniMax's request to ban sales of Oculus headsets.

Bloomberg (via GamesIndustry.biz) reports that Kinkeade affirmed the ruling from February 2017 of a $200 million award for breach of contract and another $50 million for copyright infringement. But he eliminated another $250 million that had been awarded by the jurors in that case, for infringement as well as damages against Oculus co-founders Palmer Luckey and Brendan Iribe.

Oculus argued that its infringement wasn't substantial enough to warrant such a large award. To that end, it cited that it only copied seven lines of code from ZeniMax, "out of approximately 42 billion lines."

Paul Grewal, VP and deputy general counsel of Oculus parent company Facebook, said in a statement: "We've said from day one the ZeniMax case is deeply flawed, and today the court agreed. Our commitment to Oculus is unwavering and we will continue to invest in building the future of VR."

ZeniMax is still pursuing similar legal action. Last year it also filed suit against Samsung, alleging that when John Carmack worked at id Software, he discussed an "attack plan" for mobile VR with Oculus employee Matt Hooper, which Hooper than took to Samsung.