Oculus has a new front open in the legal field when facing a new lawsuit. This time it’s a company called Total Recall (nothing to do with the movie). The reasons for the lawsuit date back to 2010 and point to Palmer Luckey.
The Oculus and Zenimax cases are now joined by Total Recall Technologies, of which two partners are part: Ron Igra and Thomas Seidl. According to the lawsuit, in December 2010, a year and a half before Palmer Luckey launched the Oculus Kickstarter campaign, Seidl met Palmer and told him about his interest in creating a virtual reality device, insisting that what they talked about would be confidential. In 2011, they paid Palmer to build a prototype to their specifications, on the condition of obtaining exclusive rights to it, to which Palmer Luckey agreed. Several legal documents were signed and in the month of August, Palmer sent them the prototype. From that time until mid-2012, Seidl tested the prototype and gave Palmer information and advice on how to improve it. At that time, and always according to the plaintiffs, Palmer showed the prototype to third parties (they could refer to John Carmack) as if it were his, breaking the signed agreement, and soon launched the Rift Kickstarter campaign.
We have decided to investigate the matter, and we verify that Palmer Luckey posted on the forums of mtbs3d.com that he manufactured a first prototype that he baptized as PR1 in November 2010, just a couple of months before he was allegedly contacted by Total Recall Technologies. A year later, and after having signed with Total Recall, Palmer built a second prototype called PR2, it was in September 2011. Very soon after, in November of that same year, the PR3 arrived, which was basically a wireless version of the PR2. Finally, the fourth prototype that you can see in the image above, was sent to Andres Hernandez “Cybereality”, moderator of mtbs3d.com he currently works as a community manager for Oculus. Unfortunately it is the only one of which we have been able to find images, since those that were in the messages left by Palmer Luckey have disappeared.
The only thing that our little research work clarifies is that Palmer had built an HMD by his own means a few months before Total Recall contacted him. Now it will have to be the justice who determines if Palmer really broke his agreement by sharing his information with others, we assume that they refer to John Carmack, who according to Zenimax also helped Palmer improve his viewfinders until it led to the Oculus Rift DK1.
