Meta is being sued by rival smart glasses maker Solos for infringing its patents. bloomberg Report. Solos is seeking “several billion dollars” in damages and an injunction that could prevent Meta from selling its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses as part of the lawsuit.
Solos claims Meta’s Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer Gen 1 smart glasses infringe on multiple patents covering “core technologies in the field of smart eyewear.” While less well-known than Meta and its partner EssilorLuxottica, Solos sells many pairs of glasses with features similar to those offered by Meta. For example, the company’s AirGo A5 glasses let you control music playback and automatically translate speech in different languages, and integrates ChatGPT for answering questions and searching the web.
Beyond product similarities, Solos claims that Meta was able to copy its patents because Oakley (an Essilor Luxottica subsidiary) and Meta employees had insight into the company’s products and road map. Solos says that in 2015, Oakley employees were introduced to the company’s smart glasses technology, and they were even given a pair of Solos Glasses to test in 2019. Solos also says that an MIT Sloan Fellow who researched the company’s products and later became a product manager at Meta brings company knowledge to his role. According to Solos’ lawsuit, by the time Meta and EssilorLuxottica were selling their own smart glasses, “both parties had accumulated years of direct, senior-level and increasingly detailed knowledge of Solos’ smart glasses technology.”
Engadget has asked both Meta and Essilor Luxottica for comment on Solos’ claims. We will update this article if we get any response.
While fewer people own Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses than those who use Instagram, Meta counts the wearable as one of its few hardware success stories. The company is so confident it can create smart glasses that it recently restructured its Reality Labs division to focus on AI hardware like smart glasses and hopefully build on its success.
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