Solos Technology claimed that it held patents for functions like intelligent assistance
Meta Platforms has been accused of infringing on patents for smart glasses technology alongside Paris-headquartered glasses manufacturer EssilorLuxottica, reported the Wall Street Journal.
Massachusetts-based rival smart glasses maker Solos Technology claimed that it held the smart glasses-related patents for functions like multimodal sensing and sensor fusion, audio processing and beamforming, contextual and activity detection systems, and intelligent assistance and real-time integration frameworks.
The suit, which was filed in Massachusetts district court, is seeking billions of dollars in damages and an injunction aiming to prevent future patent infringement. Solos also named glasses brand Oakley, an EssilorLuxottica subsidiary, as a defendant.
Meta and EssilorLuxottica are collaborators on a smart glasses portfolio that includes Ray-Bans fitted with artificial intelligence technology. Solos said it had secured its patents years before Meta and EssilorLuxottica entered the market and that the patents were foundational to Ray-Ban smart glasses features like voice-activated AI interactions, camera integration, and interactive audio, according to Tech Story.
In particular, Solos’ suit targeted the 2023 Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer Gen 1 model, although it said subsequent models kept using the patented technology.
Per Meta, over two million pairs of the Ray-Ban smart glasses had been sold as of last year.
Solos claimed that it introduced Oakley employees to its smart glasses technology in 2015 and even gave the company smart glasses for testing in 2019. It also alleged that a Meta product manager was an MIT Sloan Fellow who had studied Solos’ products in 2021. Thus, Meta and EssilorLuxottica had collectively obtained years of “direct, senior-level and increasingly detailed knowledge of Solos' smart glasses technology,” Solos said in a snippet of the suit published by Engadget.
According to WSJ, Meta, EssilorLuxottica, and Oakley did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Solos’ smart glasses offerings include AirGo A5, which incorporates ChatGPT for web searching, facilitates music playback, and features automatic language translation.
