Oculus has been accused of infringing patented methods of processing images to create 3D VR images. The complaint was filed against Oculus parent company Facebook by Californian technology licensing company, TechnoView IP Inc, on behalf of patent holders ImmersiON-VRelia.

The claim centres around US patent no 7,666,096, called ‘Method for generating the left and right perspectives in a 3D videogame’. The patent abstract reads:

“A 3D videogame system capable of displaying a left-right sequences through a different, independent VGA or video channel, with a display device sharing a memory in an immerse manner. The system has a videogame engine controlling and validating the image perspectives, assigning textures, lighting, positions, movements and aspects associated with each object participating in the game; creates left and right backbuffers, creates images and presents the information in the frontbuffers. The system allows handling the information of data associated to the xyz coordinates of the object's image in real-time, increases the RAM for the left-right backbuffer, with the possibility to discriminate and take the corresponding backbuffer, whose information is sent to the frontbuffer or additional independent display device sharing a memory in an immerse manner.”

This patent was first registered on 19 June 2006 by Manuel Rafael Gutierrez Novelo, CEO at ImmersiON-VRelia.

Prior Form?

This latest lawsuit comes barely two months after Oculus was ordered to pay Zenimax $50m for copyright infringement as part of a $500m payout.