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ZeniMax seeks permanent injunction against Oculus

Facebook's VR unit may have to pull games off its Rift headset if the injunction is approved.

Steven Musil Night Editor / News
Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. He's been hooked on tech since learning BASIC in the late '70s. When not cleaning up after his daughter and son, Steven can be found pedaling around the San Francisco Bay Area. Before joining CNET in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers.
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Things are not looking up for Oculus.

Josh Miller/CNET

A little-known company called ZeniMax Media is seeking to bar Oculus from using technology involved in a recent legal victory against Facebook's virtual reality unit.

ZeniMax filed its motion for permanent injunction on Thursday in US District Court for Northern Texas, the same court where earlier this month a jury decided Oculus owed $500 million to ZeniMax for unauthorized copying of technology. ZeniMax's subsidiaries make hit games like Doom, Quake and Fallout.

An injunction could reduce the number of games available on Oculus' Rift VR headset as the tech community's interest grows in virtual reality, which promises to transport goggle-wearing users to a computer-generated 3D environment.

Oculus dismissed the motion as having little bearing since it intends to contest the original court ruling.

"ZeniMax's motion does not change the fact that the verdict was legally flawed and factually unwarranted," an Oculus spokesman said in a statement. "We look forward to filing our own motion to set aside the jury's verdict and, if necessary, filing an appeal that will allow us to put this litigation behind us."

Oculus helped reignite people's interest in VR and led to a boom in the tech industry. Facebook bought the company for as much as $3 billion in 2014.

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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