Microsoft buys AR headset patents for $100-150M – report | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft buys AR headset patents for $100-150M – report

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95 pointsAoyagi71 comments

For those confused by the acronyms: A virtual reality (VR) headset would show the viewer an image completely produced by the device. An augmented reality (AR) headset allows you to see through the glasses at the actual world in front of you, and just projects extra data or graphics onto of this. Think of a heads-up display for a fighter pilot.

> Think of a heads-up display for a fighter pilot.

Or the HUD in the Iron Man suit.

As someone who is working on an AR project and has to constantly explain to people WHAT AR is, I find it a tad disheartening that this is the top comment in HN comments. I would have expected that the readership would have been well versed enough that it would have been mid-level.

This does serve as a good data point about technology penetration though. Thanks.

This is more likely a response to Google Glass, not Oculus.

I assume Google has built a patent portfolio around Glass. This may even be a defensive move by Microsoft. Still, looks like another tragedy of patent abuse brewing.

I wonder about the upcoming patent lawsuits against Oculus. Maybe that's their real reason for embracing FB -- protection.

Especially considering that MS has a ~1.3% Facebook (preferred) shareholding; that's 32.5 million shares, currently priced at $1.95bn - they won't be attacking FB with a patent suit any time soon.

Interestingly the Oculus buyout has also been viewed negatively by the markets, wiping 7% off the share value since the announcement.

    "wiping 7% off the share value since the announcement."

I wish everyone would stop citing this figure. Several major tech companies lost about the same amount off their market cap on the same day. Yes, some of that 7% might be attributable to the Oculus acquisition, but most of it was the result of market sentiment that day.

Shame on me. I hadn't actually looked at the rest of the market data. I came across that figure while researching how many shares Microsoft had in Facebook from a "Related Links" box.

Even if I had, I still shouldn't have repeated the speculation of the cause. Maybe the announcement stopped the share value sliding by 14%. I was already aware that one of the great fallacies of market reporting is News Item X caused change in Share Price Y.

I agree that from a quick look it seems much closer to gGlass than Oculus. As much as we give Microsoft crap these days (I run in a *nix crowd), I think this is great for the sake of innovation. I really hope it's not just defensive, because I like the idea of the future happening soon and nothing will bring that on like some healthy competition.

These patents look silly. I have done work in the AR/VR space and these patents are chaff. Much of the stuff coming to market right now is not patentable because this research goes back so far. Which is a GREAT thing.

Just in case, you have heard of Ask Patents prior art request 'section'¹? There's a lot of 'unpatentable' stuff that gets through or almost gets through the process.

¹ http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/prior-art-...

I am going to get a migraine and an ulcer reading those. I think filing bogus patent claims should be an actionable offense.

"This is more likely a response to Google Glass, not Oculus."

Glass, Oculus, and Microsoft's eventual device are all going to be competing in the same space.

I disagree. The difference between AR/Glass and VR mirrors the difference between PC and mobile machines - one is a fully-engaged immersive experience, and one is a mobile experience that's meant to compliment your interaction with the real world around you.

Expect AR devices to take off in the mobile space while VR devices take off in the PC space. Would you want to use a VR device on the train? Completely blind yourself? Walk around in public wearing one even though you can't see a wall in front of you?

Conversely, would you want to play an immersive VR game where you still see the walls of your geek den?

Do you think Oculus is going to be limited to just VR? Facebook didn't purchase them for VR alone. Their gains in VR tech will help them in AR.

Gah, it didn't occur to me that the reason the Oculus sale was so expensive might have been patent-related. VR tech is not all that complicated. I mean really, if protocols like HDMI and Thunderbolt weren't so complex, DRM and patent laden themselves, how hard is it to put an image on two screens and sync it to gyroscopes/ultrasonics/infrareds? This is college-senior-project level complexity.

Software patents are such an obvious incumbrance to programmers, but I wonder if we should think about the toll that hardware patents are taking on innovation overall Maybe it’s time to take a stance against all patents.

I’m hopeful that rapid prototyping might alleviate some of this because hardware could be open sourced and then people could assemble it themselves. Unfortunately they probably won’t be able to pay someone else to do it. That strikes me as fundamentally wrong and when the law doesn’t fit the public interest, we’ll probably see black market and bootleg manufacturing appear.

We need 21st century solutions for intellectual property, when the vast majority of manufacturing is automated and even innovation itself has been augmented by machine learning. Otherwise I see the end of innovation and only the biggest megacorps being able to afford to play.

I'm with you on reforming patents. But how do you protects companies from copy cats? iPhone is released and some hardware manufacturer makes the exact same shell running Symbian instead. I'm not talking about copying the OS, but the hardware form factor. They represent a brand image as well.

More competition is always good.

Also, if iPhone's form factor is actually better, then it would only benefit customers if other companies would adopt it.

Sure, but I if as an inventor can't be guaranteed some protections for my work, for at least some period of time, I'm less likely to produce this better form factor in the first place, which is a net negative for consumers.

Perhaps.

Some things are hard to copy though and would take time to reproduce by others (if ever).

And how do you know it would result in a net loss for consumers? I guess by assuming that iPhone's form factor would not get invented, if others were allowed to copy it. But how do you know that it wouldn't? And what about all the other things that would get invented, because people were allowed to reverse engineer stuff or develop other, currently patent protected technologies?

I think probably the easiest starting point is recognizing that innovation iterates more rapidly than a century ago and shortening patents to perhaps 3 or 5 years. We need immediate bans on process patents like software and biotech (since finance patents are already banned, I believe? So this is not a big stretch).

My gut feeling on iOS vs Symbian (running on similar hardware) is that if it's so easy to copy something like that, then iOS is only being propped up by the law anyway. It's probably not doing society much good overall.

Maybe a route forward is to allow competition, but require that if hardware is licensed by something like the GPL, then some nominal fee would have to be paid to the rights holder. Society would have to vote on what that should be, and it would be across the board, perhaps 5% to 25%, something on the level of capital gains or VAT? It would be kind of like generic drugs, where other companies would have a hard time competing because typical profits margins might be in the 15% range, so they couldn’t afford to advertise. Otherwise my feeling now is that we’re actively encouraging monopolies and it just feels really anti-entrepreneurial.

Patents are a fine idea in principle. There's little doubt that they promote innovation in pharmaceuticals, for example.

The problem arises when the patents last much longer than the "innovation cycle" in an industry. As software takes over the world, we're seeing cycle times go down in many fields, but patent laws aren't keeping up with technological reality.

Yes, shorter patents would address a decent number of the issues.

To pick one area I'm somewhat familiar with, a lot of the patents in digital-audio synthesis were initially reasonable, in my opinion. Furthermore, the system largely "worked" as it was supposed to to incentivize innovation and ensure that commercializers of technology paid some royalties to those developing it. A research group like Stanford's CCRMA would develop a new synthesis method, patent it, and license the patent to a commercializer such as Yamaha, who put it in their synthesizers and paid a royalty. Without patents, there would be a strong incentive to do this monetization via keeping things secret instead, rather than openly publishing them somewhere that Yamaha could just read.

The part where it starts seeming unreasonable is when a 15-year-old synthesis method, which is by that time ancient and textbook-standard material, is still patented.

20 year doesn't seem like such an awful term for a patent. You think 15 years is too long, no doubt there are other people who thin 10 or 5 are too long, just as there must be some people who think it should be 25 or 30 years. I feel like 20 years has stuck because it's approximately the length of one human generation.

What on earth gives you the idea that a generation is a good measure of time for a monopoly? Patents are intended to promote innovation for society not give protection to a racket. The only reason to give people a monopoly on production is to allow those who invested in the invention and research to reimburse the costs of research and development to allow for further investment in innovation.

After the time period the patent / copy rights should be released to the public domain so that everyone may benefit from cheap economy of scale production.

The only reason I could think you feel this way is that it is all you've known. In most cases a couple of years worth of profits from monopoly should suffice. In reality it depends on how much was spent on the initial innovation.

In most cases a couple of years worth of profits from monopoly should suffice. In reality it depends on how much was spent on the initial innovation.

One tricky issue is also the lead time to market. In the synthesis example, Yamaha came out with a synth within ~2 years of licensing the patent. But in some areas (like medicine) it can be common for it to take 5-10 years for a product to come out, in which case a 5-year patent would be worthless, because it would expire before you can sell anything.

Sorry I should have probably continued on, there was a bit of an implication here:

In reality it depends on how much was spent on the initial innovation [and how long it takes to reap the return on that investment].

I think a generation had stuck because that suits enough people's ideas of what's acceptable while hitting some sort of median in product development and investment returns. Not all inventions even show an immediate profit.

It seems to me that you want it to be less for your convenience, and no other factor.

> There's little doubt that they promote innovation in pharmaceuticals

Are there studies that back up your claim? Or is this propaganda from the entrenched powers?

There are studies that show patents slow down & harm innovation.

http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/do-patents-encourage-o...

Indeed, patents are good for the lawyers & entrenched players. That doesn't sound innovative to me.

It's two images for two screens: one for your left eye, one for your right.

> Software patents are such an obvious incumbrance to programmers

true for those looking to copy or re-implement something they see from others. For programmers looking to innovate or do something completely new and need a way to fund it - completely the opposite. Patents provide the programmer support in convincing investors to fork over their cash since smart investors recognize the R&D will even in the worst case scenario (e.g. startup goes bankrupt) result in a patent which can be transferable or monetized.

This is a perfect example. The 80+ issued patents and 53+ pending patents have provided the original investors a return on their investments. The engineers got funded and got to work on what they wanted, while the investors got rewarded. Both are satisfied and will likely continue on again.

The sheer number of patents involved, and the generality of said patents is what discourages future innovation.

It's a complete first man advantage, anyone coming after that has to deal with the fact that 130+ patents already exist. Sure, some of these are probably extremely valid, but seriously, 130+?

So we've got some revolutionary new technique that allows real-time visualisation direct onto the user's retina, your brain can't distinguish it from reality..

Yeah, but the user is seeing something that's not physically present? Got that one covered. Pay up.

Patents block copying only exactly what's covered by the Claims and thereby encourage finding alternatives or develop new ways. Society benefits from having alternatives to choose from.

>How hard is it to put an image on two screens and sync it to gyroscopes/ultrasonics/infrareds? This is college-senior-project level complexity.

Hard.

I think AR is at least 10 years behind VR in terms of mainstream adoption or "usefulness". VR is almost there (I think with 4k resolution, it will be) to provide incredible advantages over what we have now. AR on the other hand will most likely be mainly a gimmick for the next 10 years or so, even if they can show some pretty cool demos initially. Take Microsoft's Illumiroom for example which is "sort of AR". The immersion is much greater in VR than what Illumiroom offers, and I'd much rather be "present" in a VR world, than see some light show on my walls, at much poorer quality and much lower realism.

I've never been in an illumiroom, but I have been in a CAVE like environment with 3d projected walls. Pressing a button on the motion tracked handset and seeing (and hearing) a lightsabre blade come out of it was by far the coolest technology mediated experience I've had. I've got a Rift, but I don't think anything it offers will be as good as that.

How stupid. Microsoft pays a bunch of people who invented a bunch of ideas that are now restricted from being used.

What a joke the patent system is. We're paying people to innovate ideas, and prevent any product with those ideas from coming to market.

Patent holders should have to pay a substantial tax / fee every year to keep their patents. If these ideas are so valuable, they should be building products and benefiting society with them. Not stuffing them under the mattress and waiting to sue some poor sap who actually wants to ship something.

I think the comments in this thread talking about AR and VR as if they are different are misplaced -- AR and VR will converge:

http://willsteptoe.com/post/66968953089/ar-rift-part-1

I can't wait for AR similar to the show Dennou Coil to become a real. It seems potentially feasible to be a real thing even if at the time the show was made it probably seemed impossible.

Very interesting development. Personally I don't see AR being anywhere close to VR in terms of usefulness, polish, and mass market appeal. VR obviously is going to be a major player in the gaming/entertainment industries, while an AR headset is more of a general use device for everyone. It'll be interesting to see what MS comes out with.

AR is potentially much more useful, but VR is much more likely to lead to useful products in the near future. VR is hard, but AR has all the same problems of VR plus a whole bunch more.

AR will no doubt be helped along by VR tech. But I'd guess mass-market AR will first appear in vehicle and building windows.

Some AR is already present in some vehicles. My mother has a "HUD" that reflects off the glass that displays speed, and gas consumption in the direct LOS while driving, but not intrusive enough to distract, mid 2000's car.

But if I abstract what you are saying a bit, I would have to agree that AR is going to be an "easier" sell in b2b than b2c, it has been for a while. I think the cross over will happen when consumers are more exposed to the ways businesses leverage it.

Here's a scenario I can see before mainstream adoption: Imagine a sales clerk or rep with it as you walk into the store to pull in data from across the web about you from facial recog and be able to automatically point you to where you might be interested, maybe even using google's/microsoft's/facebook's/yelp's/some startup's "intent" api that pulls in your latest queries that may be relevant to the store you just we're identified in.

Then some people see such things used, and then want the same capabilities as they navigate their cities around them seeing that it could be useful in their life.

> Some AR is already present in some vehicles.

If HUDs are considered AR (a valid viewpoint, as far as I'm concerned) then they've been in warplanes since WW2.

I don't see AR getting mass customer adoption before it can be directly grafted.

> Imagine a sales clerk or rep with it as you walk into the store to pull in data from across the web about you from facial recog and be able to automatically point you to where you might be interested

That sounds horrifying. And unlikely, that customers efficiently go through their purchases in the least possible time is not really in most store's interest.

>That sounds horrifying.

Well, the technology is here, the behavioral patterns in the way people use services are here, and with companies like foursquare[0], who are basically doing the same thing (minus the facial recog, which the tech is present for, but the challenge now is connecting disparate data sets available which can be leveraged at scale for general purposes [which I'm working on], and not being shackled to things large companies typically are [we don't have user accounts, so we don't have "users" to appease, and we don't have $X billion in revenue so we have to take chances/experiment in order to grow]), this will be a growing market where consumers will be exposed to such technology and its benefits (and drawbacks because not everything is rose colored through my lenses).

My startup is working in the periphery of this area now, so I can't say that I don't have financial/technical interest involved with this. From the issues that we get notified now about our current product is basically people are afraid because they don't have "control" over "their" data and don't understand how others are able to technically leverage it (or anything technical about how the internet works, besides the profitable skinner boxes that make up most consumer tech companies). People make baseless legal threats all the time against us, but it is always interesting how it is always complaints about them as the individual and not about for others; those same people are happy to observe/give up information about other people.

>And unlikely, that customers efficiently go through their purchases in the least possible time is not really in most store's interest.

Valid point for some stores, but I was thinking about this from the perspective of the store rep trying to establish some kind of human touch to the shopping experience more so than they do now, while leveraging the data they have so they can more efficiently decide who they should focus their efforts on rather than the stereotypes made from their experiences. I guess what I'm saying is that it may not be as clear cut as what some make it out to be, and in that ambiguity lies the opportunity.

[0] http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/05/foursquare-revenues/

> Valid point for some stores, but I was thinking about this from the perspective of the store rep trying to establish some kind of human touch to the shopping experience

I don't think this[0] is a "human touch". A creepy stalker touch maybe. And your scheme would go even further.

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.h...

>[...]creepy stalker[...]

Which are attributes usually assigned to human beings, no? Or do you enjoy being trailed by officers/staff when you shop because of the color of your skin, or do you not have to face nor think about such things when you shop or in other interactions in your life? Because I don't particularly enjoy that either, and I'm doing what I can to address it among other issues assuming that if others could leverage information that is already out there about me, maybe, just maybe I won't have to be treated as subhuman by some on initial interactions, or at least while I patronize a store on occasion. What are you doing to address the problems you have surrounding the use of technology in such ways beyond vocalizing your displeasure? Do you still use social networking, webmail, play apps via smartphone, purchase via credit cards online/offline, etc…? If so, your behaviors are telling others otherwise.

I'm just stating that's the direction things are going in now, and for anyone to avoid such realities means that they shall continue to be suspended in a state of cognitive dissonance. Hardly just my "scheme", I'm just a piece in the puzzle that was already being built before I was even born.

> If HUDs are considered AR (a valid viewpoint, as far as I'm concerned)

I don't consider HUDs to be AR unless there is some aspect of registration. To be fully what I would consider AR, they need to understand at least something about the scene and modify it. To add data to the scene without understanding it doesn't really count.

But AR has the benefit of a built-in stable background with zero latency, which means that latency in e.g. head tracking might be a little distracting but won't result in VR's crippling nausea. Seems like that's one major problem solved out of the box.

That is interesting, I wonder what patents or provisionals CastAR has in the pipeline.

Not surprising. If you had the billions that Microsoft does, you'd invest in patents too. At this point it's the software equivalent of buying out the supply chain like Apple famously does with hardware components.

I only thought about this for their Xbox division, until I saw the comments in here.

But the idea of glasses that shows you ammo count, health and other infos while your playing. Basically a HUD on your face. is really appealing to me.

Meta are the company to watch in the AR space.

MS and patents? A very bad mix.

Am I the only one who saw the UPGRADE NOW banner ? despite Adblock?

This website breaks mobile safari. The bar at the bottom does not appear when scrolling up.

It's 2014 and Microsoft keeps on being the "me too" of consumer technology.

I love how the real MS shows up from time to time to remind us that all the 'new openness' and fair play talk is exactly that, and probably always will be.

I tend to agree with the sentiment, but exactly what ill-intent does acquiring patents actually demonstrate?

That's a fair question, and maybe I am jumping the gun with this particular set of patents. But my interpretation is in context with other patent licensing news (March 26th, 2014):

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBREA2P1VC20140326?irpc...

So I was primed to read this as opening a new front in an ongoing, contemporary effort to use patents aggressively. Maybe the downvotes are a clear signal that I'm destined to be proven wrong in this regard. I guess we'll see.

Let's see, Microsoft is extorting $3.4bil a year off a technology it did absolutely nothing to contribute to (Android).

The ill-intent is that they are betting on AR succeeding too so that they can extort money off that.

Microsoft, as usual, following other's footsteps. Kinda sad since they used to lead the game.

As mentioned earlier on HN, deals like these don't just happen overnight. They literally are the result of months (sometimes years) of planning, analysis, and strategy. To think that MS is just going to drop $100 mil on AR technology because Facebook did (are they really even competitors, I mean come on...) is very naïve.

Obviously companies like Microsoft have their own spies in Facebook and Google and vice versa, so yeah this might well be a response to Facebook buying Oculus.

The parents were reassigned to Microsoft on January 17th. Maybe Facebook is the copy cat.

Just because they bought a few patents doesn't mean they're following. FWIW, MSR has done some pioneering work here and they showcased early prototypes a while back. I wouldn't be surprised ms has had one in the works for a while

> Kinda sad since they used to lead the game.

May be when they first made their Basic interpreter. And Word for Windows.

But everything else was an acquisition or a clone. DOS bought, Windows cloned from Xerox and Mac, Excel cloned from Lotus-123, FoxPro bought, XBOX cloned from playstation, Internet Explorer bought.

Easy to say 'cloned' when you mean 'built'. There's a lot of differences between those products. If an entrepreneur came out with them it'd be called innovation, not cloning.

And iPhone closed from the Palm. And the iPod cloned from the Archos Rockbox. And Linux of course cloned from Unix. And the Mac cloned from Xerox. And the iPad cloned from tablet PCs. And the PlayStation cloned from Nintendo. Nintendo cloned from Atari 2600. Atari 2600 cloned from board games.

BTW, Word cloned from Word Perfect. BASIC interpreter cloned from all the previous BASIC interpreters that existed.

Being first or "leading" don't matter. It's about execution and a bit of luck. Look at Android. It sure as heck wasn't first, but they executed. Windows wasn't first, but they executed.

Would you like to explain how e.g. Excel is a clone of 123, but 123 is not a clone of Visicalc?

I mean, everything ever done with digital computers is an extension of Charles Babbage's work on the difference engine, which was cloned from Pascal's calculator of the 1640s, maybe with a couple of enhancements here and there. See how you sound?

And the iPhone was a clone of Windows Mobile?

To be fair, Google wasn't the first at search, email, or smartphones but they do very well in each of those areas.

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