Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus Rift face a lawsuit over alleged illegal use of data. On Saturday, judge gave permission to proceed the lawsuit against the 23-year old inventor from Total Recall Technologies.
Although the lawsuit was proceeded to the court, that does not mean Luckey is guilty according to Engadget. He just has to prove that the accusation from Total Recall Technologies is not true. The company was his former employers, accused the California-resident using proprietary knowledge that belongs to the company to build Oculus Rift.
Engadget also emphasized that there are many cases where people quit the companies to build competitive products, and being competitors to a fomer employer is not illegal.
On Saturday, according to Reuters, U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco ruled that a breach of contract claim could proceed against Palmer Luckey. Judge Alsup only ruled claim on breach of contract and dismissed other claims, including fraud allegations.
Since his young age, Palmer Luckey had interest on electronics and particularly virtual reality technology. During his study in Journalism at California State University, he worked at a University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies as an engineer for head-mounted display (HMD). This is his passion which drove him to found the company Oculus VR in 2012 with Brendan Iribe, in order to develop their famous Oculus Rift HMD.
Luckey explained in an interview with Business Insider, that because of his passion, he gave up his journalism study to work on VR technology. He did not just do it for money.
Furthermore, he explained, "When I was in tech journalism, I thought I was taking a break from school after Oculus took off. That seemed like the riskier path at the time. Like 'I'm almost done with my degree in tech journalism, am I really going to give up my career in tech journalism for this wacky VR thing?' Well that sounded like a lot of fun, so I'm going to go do that."
Oculus VR now becomes part of Facebook, after the social media giant acquired the company in 2014. Brendan Iribe, the co-founder was appointed CEO.
Prior to established his company Oculus VR, Palmer Luckey was working for Total Recall Technologies, a Hawaiian-based company. Luckey signed a nondisclosure agreement in 2011 to make head-mounted display for the company. Total Recall Technologies is a surveillance technology provider with various array of implementation in command and control center, wireles and video network.
Total Recall Technologies alleged Luckey to breach the nondislosure agreement and use the company's data for developing his Oculus Rift HMD. The case is registered in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California as Total Recall Technologies vs. Palmer Luckey and Oculus VR, Inc., 15-2281.
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