After Facebook’s $2 Billion Deal, Some Virtual Unreality in the Stock Market

Facebook’s $2 billion deal for Oculus VR, a virtual reality headset maker, made a splash in Silicon Valley. It also appears to be sending ripples through obscure corners of the stock market.

The shares of two relatively unknown companies, Oculus Innovative Sciences and Oculus VisionTech, rose on Wednesday, possibly benefiting from a case of mistaken identity among investors. The equity of Oculus VR, meanwhile, is closely held.

Oculus VisionTech, a tiny company in Vancouver that helps businesses put digital watermarks on video transmissions, experienced a 152 percent rise in its shares on Wednesday morning. The stock, listed on a Canadian exchange, closed at 14 Canadian cents on Tuesday.

The company was forced to halt trading in its stock and prepare a news release clarifying that it had no involvement in the Facebook deal, according to Tony Drescher, the company’s chief financial officer.

“I think it’s the fact that we have the same first name,” Mr. Drescher said by phone on Wednesday, explaining the stock movement. “It’s a coincidence.”

The other big mover, Oculus Innovative Sciences, a health care company based in Petaluma, Calif., whose shares are listed on the Nasdaq, rose as much as 15 percent to $5.20 a share.

This would not be the first time that a big transaction in the tech world has set off a frenzy in unrelated but similar-sounding stocks.

In January, shares of Nestor, a defunct shell of a company that once sold automated traffic enforcement equipment, awoke from a long slumber after Google agreed to buy Nest Labs, a maker of Internet-connected devices like thermostats and smoke alarms, for $3.2 billion.

And last fall, after Twitter filed to go public, shares of Tweeter Home Entertainment, a defunct home entertainment retailer whose stock had barely traded, soared as much as 685 percent before trading was halted.

Here’s the news release that Oculus VisionTech released on Wednesday:

“Oculus VisionTech Inc. (TSX.V: OVT; OTCBB: OVTZ) advises that there is no material change in the affairs of the Company and the Company is not associated with the recently announced transaction involving Facebook Inc. and Oculus VR Inc.”