The $500 million copyright infringement award issued last year by a Dallas jury against Facebook and its virtual reality subsidiary Oculus was slashed by 50 percent this week by the North Texas federal judge handling the case.
U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade issued his final judgment Wednesday in which he rejected pleas from Oculus that the entire $500 million jury verdict in favor of video game company ZeniMax Media be reversed.
But the judge, in a 15-page order, granted a motion by Oculus that the jury’s finding of damages due to false designation – or lying about the origin of the product – must be rejected “because the evidence establishing any damages and also the proximate cause of those damages as awarded by the jury is legally insufficient.”
As a result, Judge Kinkeade tossed out $250 million of the half-billion-dollar verdict.
Last spring, Facebook and ZeniMax duked it out in a nearly month-long federal trial in Dallas that included testimony of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Both sides are expected to appeal Judge Kinkeade’s decision.