Meta is being sued by Solos, a rival sensible glasses maker, for infringing on its patents, Bloomberg experiences. Solos is looking for “a number of billions of {dollars}” in damages and an injunction that would forestall Meta from promoting its Ray-Ban Meta sensible glasses as a part of the lawsuit.
Solos claims that Meta’s Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer Gen 1 sensible glasses violate a number of patents masking “core applied sciences within the discipline of sensible eyewear.” Whereas much less well-known than Meta and its accomplice EssilorLuxottica, Solos sells a number of pairs of glasses with related options to what Meta gives. For instance, the corporate’s AirGo A5 glasses permits you to management music playback and routinely translate speech into totally different languages, and integrates ChatGPT for answering questions and looking out the online.
Past the product similarities, Solos claims that Meta was in a position to copy its patents as a result of Oakley (an EssilorLuxottica subsidiary) and Meta workers had insights into the corporate’s merchandise and highway map. Solos says that in 2015, Oakley workers have been launched to the corporate’s sensible glasses tech, and have been even given a pair of Solos glasses for testing in 2019. Solos additionally says {that a} MIT Sloan Fellow who researched the corporate’s merchandise and later grew to become a product supervisor at Meta, introduced data of the corporate to her position. In accordance with the logic of Solos’ lawsuit, by the point Meta and EssilorLuxottica have been promoting their very own sensible glasses, “either side had accrued years of direct, senior-level and more and more detailed data of Solos’ sensible glasses expertise.”
Engadget has requested each Meta and EssilorLuxottica to touch upon Solos’ claims. We’ll replace this text if we hear again.
Whereas fewer individuals personal Ray-Ban Meta sensible glasses than use Instagram, Meta considers the wearable one in every of its few {hardware} success tales. The corporate is so satisfied it will possibly make sensible glasses occur that it not too long ago restructured its Actuality Labs division to concentrate on AI {hardware} like sensible glasses and hopefully construct on its success.
