Samsung patents smart contact lenses with a built-in camera | Hacker News Reader

Samsung patents smart contact lenses with a built-in camera

mashable.com

50 pointslelf47 comments

Okay Samsung, you now have 1 year to demonstrate a working prototype or significant progress and effort spent building towards one, or you lose your patent.

At least that's how it should work.... sigh.

Yup, and the article's fancy header graphic? It's of the Google diabetes-monitoring contact lens project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contact_Lens Definitely not misleading...

Someone really ought to start patenting every awesome piece of technology that we love from sci-fi, then license them for free to anyone who can actually use them.

Maybe we could get a kickstarter going for it! I say we start with battlemechs and work our way down from there.

Doesn't the patent imply realistic implementation? I don't think you can patent just anything without any idea how to make it. For example a teleporter? I agree however that preemptive defensive patents that are released for free is a good idea.

I seriously doubt Samsung has any the ability to overcome the hurdles in storage, communication, and video projection to make these in a reasonable timeframe either.

They'd also require significant advances in materials science in order to get to the point where they can even try and overcome those hurdles. Bionic contact lenses are going to be hard enough to develop. Including viable camera functionality is going to be an even greater task.

No, not really. There are many, many, many patents that are obviously not a working invention. You just have to be able to tell a good story and pay the fee.

You need to reduce it to practice. Which means something less than a fully working product, but more than just the idea of what the product would do. You need to know how the invention works.

I agree that's the idea, but based on many patents I've seen it's not the reality.

>Someone really ought to start patenting every awesome piece of technology that we love from sci-fi

That's actually Nathan Myhrvold's, ex-CTO of Microsoft, business plan for Intellectual Ventures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Myhrvold#Intellectual_v...

He basically gathered around a bunch of visionaries, 'industry leaders' and sci-fi people and then they started patenting ideas that they thought would end up as products a decade+ later. Some accused him and IV of being patent trolls... because they patented all kinds of general stuff.

nice try, Nathan.

Intellectual Ventures charges money for licensing, nothing free about it. I'm not saying they should be free, just saying they aren't.

I recently learned that IV has 3 arms of operation: Patent trolling, basic research, and health/disease related tech.

People know about their trolling but little about the other two. I must say they are not particularly adept at PR.

Sadly, IV is known as one of the most egregious patent trolls out there...

Why do you need to patent them rather than just publish the idea? One there is prior art you can't get a patent in an idea (simplifying).

"Shouldn't be able to get", not "can't get". I don't know how that business works, but it may be cheaper than having to legally establish that there has in fact been prior art.

This is in South Korea, not the United States. While the United States patent system is dysfunctional in a similar way (granting patents for things that haven't been invented yet to parties that have not invented them), it is their patent system that this reflects badly on, not ours.

Google invents smart contact lens with built-in camera:

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/180571-google-invents-sma...

Anyone who takes this to mean that "in the next ten years, it will be possible to produce a contact lens that has a camera and a powered display capable of any resolution that involves like triple-digits pixels in the horizontal and vertical, and, god forfend, an actual battery for both, for any price including $50M per lens," is dreaming.

That's right. Apple will make the first popular one and it'll cost $500 a pair, and require an upgrade each year.

If it was $500/year, I would get them in a heartbeat as contacts currently cost $150-300/year, depending on fanciness (monthly/weekly/daily replacement, coatings, etc)

Yup. I was just thinking how inexpensive $500 sounded. Will they work with hydrogen peroxide based solution or do I need to upgrade?

$500 for a pair of contacts that only need replacing once a year? I'd buy that even without the camera.

I think you mean soft contacts. You can buy hard contacts that last a year right now.

Um... There are year-long-wear soft contacts for well below $500.

And will have a proprietary USB type E connector. Or something like that.

well if they don't get it in 20 years, doesn't the patent expire?

It's a South Korean patent, no idea what their expiry is.

20 years on top of the application date, as far as my Googling returns. Seems like a fairly standard term.

The article has a link that looks like it should lead to the patent in question, but actually links to a page that pops up the badly-translated message:

> "Is not the normal approach. After searching it uses."

And then closes itself. Does anyone have a link to the patent in question?

Their website seems to have a weird linking system. I found the page in question, and because their system is weird, the "get link" button doesn't really do a normal permalink, it just gives you a goo.gl link. Whoever wrote the article in question just copied what was in the URL bar, which doesn't work for any of the patents.

http://goo.gl/ZKRWCv

Aha... Vernor Vinge predicted the device. I never realised the future can become past so fast.

Rainbow's End is one of my favorite books, and he predicts quite a bit in it.

Patent question--could something like Rainbow's End ever be used to invalidate this patent?

It has at least been suggested in the "Donald Duck cartoon raising a ship" patent:

http://www.iusmentis.com/patents/priorart/donaldduck/

At the very least, it strikes a serious blow against the novelty aspect.

Science fiction works are not prior art.

They are when the patent is on a concept, not an implementation.

There isn't such a thing as a concept patent. Concepts are copyrighted. You may be thinking of design patents.

Citation to utility patent overturned by prior art from science fiction, please?

So how can one patent something one can't actually build. I would call that a concept patent.

<pedant> Rainbows End </pedant>

But yes, I really like it too. I wish he'd write a sequel. There's plenty more mileage to Mr. Rabbit.

Also, could someone hurry up and invent UP/Ex? Pneumatic mortars firing disposable cardboard gliders are so obviously better than any sensible approach to last-mile package delivery...

It even has a freaking chapter named "The missing apostraphe."

Contact lenses with cameras and retinal projection devices have long been a sci fi device.

Problem is power. Batteries are holding back the future.

Wireless power transmission should solve that. The larger battery can live in your jeans pocket, shirt pocket or somewhere else (all that space in your sinuses is just waiting to be used!)

naah, just invent some irrelevant to the eye bacteria that when submersed into the eye's liquid reacts and shivers. Hookup a dynamo to its move and viola! You have a power generator!

Of course minimize it all from what we can do today somewhere like 100,000 times.

I would be nervous about RF energy directed towards the particularly sensitive parts of my eyeball.

Guess the next step is to embed them into your eyes when your are born. Built in VR.

Of course just because they have the patent does not mean it will actually work or that we have the technology to do so.

And you thought google glass was creepy. This is a whole new level.

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