March 3, 2017—This post is a follow-up to my post a couple weeks ago regarding the Zenimax v. Oculus case. As expected, Zenimax filed its motion for an injunction on February 23. The motion itself pulls no punches. It directly and angrily argues that Oculus’s entire business was built on Zenimax’s intellectual property. At the same time, Zenimax also filed its motion to have judgment entered on the jury verdict, which as I mentioned in my earlier post is a first step in transforming the jury verdict into something that Zenimax can attempt to collect on. Both documents provide interesting insights into the case. Some highlights:
- While the requested injunction covers a lot of different things, the real nuclear component of the requested injunction is stated as follows:
Defendant Oculus is permanently enjoined, on a worldwide basis, from using, marketing, selling, distributing, modifying, servicing, copying, or offering for sale or license any products, in whole or in part, that utilize in any form or for any purpose any of the Copyrighted Materials, including but not limited to (i) system software for Oculus PC (including the Oculus PC SDK); (ii) system software for Oculus Mobile (including the Oculus Mobile SDK); (iii) Oculus integration with the Epic Games Unreal Engine; and (iv) Oculus integration with theUnity Technologies Unity Game Engine.
This is really the teeth of the injunction, as it would basically put Oculus’s entire business on hold. It will also be the most difficult thing for Zenimax to obtain. Perhaps realizing his, Zenimax requested a 20% royalty on all future sales for ten years in the event the Court did not believe an injunction should be issued.
- Zenimax is seeking prejudgment interest on a variety of different parts of the money judgment. This interest is substantial. According to Zenimax’s calculations, if judgment were entered today, the prejudgment interest should be approximately $78,797,000. Post judgment interest would also accrue during the pendency of the appeal, although the post-judgment interest rate for federal court judgments currently sits at a paltry .83%.
- Zenimax is also requesting an award of its attorneys’ fees, which it estimates at $40,000,000.
Thus, as you can see, the financial and existential stakes for Oculus are only getting higher.
