Does Oculus have any intellectual property on their HMD?

[HMDEngr]

The Rift design form does not appear to be Palmer's original idea.
Checkout http://ict.usc.edu/prototypes/immersive-viewer/
And the lower FOV hasbro toy http://www.hasbro.com/hasbromy3d/en_US/

It seems like Oculus has a great team but given the simplicity of the device and the apparent lack of intellectual property I wonder if we'll see a flock of competitors hit the market with essentially the same product.
Good for users. May not be so good for Oculus investors.

[MrGreen]

The Rift design form does not appear to be Palmer's original idea.
Checkout http://ict.usc.edu/prototypes/immersive-viewer/

Pro-tip: Check the team members list.

[blazespinnaker]

Yeah, looks like they'll probably apply for all sorts of annoying narrow patents on sensor fusion / correction / etc.

Fortunately, a lot of IMU chips are being made externally to OculusVR so they'll be easy enough to get around. And that's really where all the heavy lifting is being done, is on those chips.

People who write apps based on those chips need to take their medicine if they think they can write patents based on that. There's so much prior art on motion cap / sensor fusion, at the very best they write obvious improvements to those algorithms. Anyways, even if they do, there's so many ways to skin those cats, they'd be easy enough to get around.

Really, the company needs to find a focus other than the sensor stuff (unless they're thinking of going into chip development, in which case, bravo and good luck)

Personally, I think they should just duplicate the scaleform but for VR. It's what they're really good at (they have a pretty proven team there), and at least they'd be doing something useful for the world rather than anti-progress like more bull**** patents.


And isn't it what everyone wants? Oasis / the next SecondLife..

[HMDEngr]

The Rift design form does not appear to be Palmer's original idea.
Checkout http://ict.usc.edu/prototypes/immersive-viewer/

Pro-tip: Check the team members list.

Yes it's clear where he got the idea from. It's a lot less clear whose idea it was and even less clear if there are any IP rights (the important part from a business perspective). Question remains, what's stopping someone else from doing the same thing?

[Ziggurat]

The Rift design form does not appear to be Palmer's original idea.
Checkout http://ict.usc.edu/prototypes/immersive-viewer/

Pro-tip: Check the team members list.

Yes it's clear where he got the idea from. It's a lot less clear whose idea it was and even less clear if there are any IP rights (the important part from a business perspective). Question remains, what's stopping someone else from doing the same thing?

Skill
Knowledge
Time
Money
Other resources


Valve wants to do the same thing, Sony wants to do the same thing, John Carmack wants to do the same thing, if it was easy they would have done it already.

[WiredEarp]

They probably just want to defend themselves against claims against them - and considering they have provided simply the best gyro based tracker I have ever used, I can understand the desire (even if we think its misguided) to at least try to milk it for all they can get.

That said, I do agree with blazespinnaker that there is so much prior stuff its not helpful enforcing patents on this stuff. However its always good to have a few cards in your hand.

[geekmaster]

The Rift design form does not appear to be Palmer's original idea.
Checkout http://ict.usc.edu/prototypes/immersive-viewer/

Pro-tip: Check the team members list.

Yes it's clear where he got the idea from.

Umm... From HIMSELF, perhaps?

Team

Mark Bolas
Perry Hoberman
Todd Richmond
Evan Suma
David Krum
Thai Phan
Palmer Luckey
David Nelson

The basic idea of using lenses near your eyes to view a stereoscopic pair of SBS images goes back long before the age of Palmer Luckey:

The earliest type of stereoscope was invented by Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1838. ... David Brewster did not invent the stereoscope. Brewster's contribution was the suggestion to use lenses for uniting the dissimilar pictures in 1849; and accordingly the lenticular stereoscope (lens based) may fairly be said to be his invention. This allowed a reduction in size, creating hand-held devices. ... In 1861 Oliver Wendell Holmes created and deliberately did not patent a handheld, streamlined, much more economical viewer than had been available before. The stereoscope, which dates from the 1850s, consisted of two prismatic lenses and a wooden stand to hold the stereo card. This type of stereoscope remained in production for a century. It is primarily American, although it is often named "Mexican stereoscope."

The real "magic" in the Oculus Rift concept is the low-latency head tracking, and the use of lens distortion to give a wider FoV.

[HMDEngr]

Umm... From HIMSELF, perhaps?

Team

Mark Bolas
Perry Hoberman
Todd Richmond
Evan Suma
David Krum
Thai Phan
Palmer Luckey
David Nelson

There are seven other names there...in any case my point is that it does not appear that Palmer owns this idea.

The real "magic" in the Oculus Rift concept is the low-latency head tracking, and the use of lens distortion to give a wider FoV.

No I don't think so. The use of a large display to make the large FOV optics simple and the availability of that display at very low cost are the game changers. For the first time we have a very large FOV HMD at very low cost.

[blazespinnaker]

The sophisticated work they've done is in head tracking as WiredEarp pointed out. If they were to write patents, that seems like the area. Look at the PHDs they have on staff as MrGreen suggested.

Patent Examiners do love PHds.

I'm pretty anti-patent, at least for software patents. I donate to EFF because of all the anti patent stuff they do.

I wish there were organisations that was dedicated to that, attacking obvious patents or patents with prior art, and we could donate to the ones that are most effective.

Not all patents are bad, of course.

[geekmaster]

The real "magic" in the Oculus Rift concept is the low-latency head tracking, and the use of lens distortion to give a wider FoV.

No I don't think so. The use of a large display to make the large FOV optics simple and the availability of that display at very low cost are the game changers. For the first time we have a very large FOV HMD at very low cost.

Huh? What exactly don't you "think so"? "The use of lens distortion to give a wider FoV" means about the same as what you said, but I was referring to "IP related" features.

The real Intellectual Property are the head tracker (their own design), and the use of inexpensive lenses and their distortion to increase FoV, and of course the proprietary portions of the OculusVR SDK. Just as I said. The cost and display size are not related to intellectual property in this case (the whole point of this thread).

So there is really nothing I said to disagree with, and the "game changers" you suggested are not IP.

[HMDEngr]

Skill
Knowledge
Time
Money
Other resources


Valve wants to do the same thing, Sony wants to do the same thing, John Carmack wants to do the same thing, if it was easy they would have done it already.

It wasn't easy, until now. I don't think there is a shortage of anything you mention. There has been a lot more skill, knowledge, time, money and other resources put into smaller FOV small display systems that clearly do not have the potential of the Rift.

I suspect others are going to start applying their resources to this design form and we will start seeing competitive product.

[HMDEngr]

The real "magic" in the Oculus Rift concept is the low-latency head tracking, and the use of lens distortion to give a wider FoV.

No I don't think so. The use of a large display to make the large FOV optics simple and the availability of that display at very low cost are the game changers. For the first time we have a very large FOV HMD at very low cost.

Huh? What exactly don't you "think so"? "The use of lens distortion to give a wider FoV" means about the same as what you said, but I was referring to "IP related" features. Cost and display size are not related to intellectual property in this case (the whole point of this thread).

What's new and valuable about the Rift is its design form for the optical system. If this was protected it would put oculus in a much stronger position.

[geekmaster]

What's new and valuable about the Rift is its design form for the optical system. If this was protected it would put oculus in a much stronger position.

The design form that uses a pair of lenses to view a pair of images has been in use since the 1800's. Even the non-adjustable IPD has prior art. What part of the optics do you think may be patentable? SBS stereoscopic video has been used long before the Rift, and microscopes and telescopes have replaceable "eyecups", and the ViewMaster has positioned simple lenses close to the eyes, so what exactly is proprietary in your opinion?

The things I mentioned (and you disagreed with) really are the primary sources of potential IP, as far as I can see.

There are seven other names there...in any case my point is that it does not appear that Palmer owns this idea.

So then, which of those other guys in that list do you think Palmer stole his idea from, if not himself? What experience do the other team members have with collecting HMDs, disassembling them, and experimenting with mashups of their components, like Palmer has been documented to do?

Ideas are cheap. What is important is that somebody takes "ownership" of an idea and runs with it, actually CREATING something people want, such as the Oculus Rift. Palmer did that, so he is the current "owner" of that idea, although that does not make it patentable as such.

Your suggestions and examples in both instances lack merit, and do not provide a basis on which to continue your disagreement with my posts, which stand on their own merit.

[HMDEngr]

What's new and valuable about the Rift is its design form for the optical system. If this was protected it would put oculus in a much stronger position.

The design form that uses a pair of lenses to view a pair of images has been in use since the 1800's. Even the non-adjustable IPD has prior art. What part of the optics do you think may be patentable? SBS stereoscopic video has been used long before the Rift, and microscopes and telescopes have replaceable "eyecups", and the ViewMaster has positioned simple lenses close to the eyes, so what exactly is proprietary in your opinion?

The things I mentioned (and you disagreed with) really are the primary sources of potential IP, as far as I can see.

There are seven other names there...in any case my point is that it does not appear that Palmer owns this idea.

So then, which of those other guys in that list do you think Palmer stole his idea from, if not himself? What experience do the other team members have with collecting HMDs, disassembling them, and experimenting with mashups of their components, like Palmer has been documented to do?

Ideas are cheap. What is important is that somebody takes "ownership" of an idea and runs with it, actually CREATING something people want, such as the Oculus Rift. Palmer did that, so he is the current "owner" of that idea, although that does not make it patentable as such.

Your suggestions and examples in both instances lack merit, and do not provide a basis on which to continue your disagreement with my posts, which stand on their own merit.

For the record I never said Palmer stole anything, just that he does not appear to own the design form. I think it's fantastic what he has done with the idea and I hope he is incredibly successful pushing it forward. What a great story for a kid to change the world and come out on top. We'll have to see how it plays out. My point has been, given the apparent lack of IP there are likely to be competitors entering the market doing the same thing. This will make things more difficult for oculus as a company.

[geekmaster]

... For the record I never said Palmer stole anything, just that he does not appear to own the design form. I think it's fantastic what he has done with the idea and I hope he is incredibly successful pushing it forward. What a great story for a kid to change the world and come out on top. We'll have to see how it plays out. My point has been, given the apparent lack of IP there are likely to be competitors entering the market doing the same thing. This will make things more difficult for oculus as a company.

Which may be why portions of the SDK, which gets compiled into Rift apps, have a proprietary license that limits it to being used only with an official Rift or a non-commercial Rift clone. The real proprietary things here are the in-house IMU (which could probably be emulated with other hardware), and the SDK that gets compiled into Rift apps (with could be replaced in open-source Rift apps). The big thing that OculusVR has on their side is TIME and their industry-wide accolades, and of course their 16-megabucks investment to get the consumer Rift out the door. They just need an alignment of required component pricing and availability on a large enough scale to meet expected consumer demand for the consumer product.

[MSat]

Utilizing similar technology as the Rift, it's unlikely any competitor no matter how big would be able to undercut Oculus by any significant margin (assuming they also price their devices aggressively). The only place they really stand to lose (and I guess it's potentially a big deal) is in the console market should Sony or Microsoft decide to provide their own hardware. The only aspect to the Rift that might be patentable is something like computer-side image warping to account for optics warping.

[geekmaster]

... The only aspect to the Rift that might be patentable is something like computer-side image warping to account for optics warping.

Paul Bourke was talking about that back in 2004, but the tech goes back even farther. The OculusVR SDK just uses a subset of the standard "Brown's model" lens distortion correction formula, just like most image processing software uses, so that could be difficult to patent without some creative legal wrangling that may cause more harm than good.

If OculusVR does have some special IP other than the "signature" Oculus Rift product shape and the embedded firmware and the SDK proprietary source code modules (all of which can easily be replaced), we can only speculate about what it may be at this time.

[MSat]

... The only aspect to the Rift that might be patentable is something like computer-side image warping to account for optics warping.

Paul Bourke was talking about that back in 2004, but the tech goes back even farther. The OculusVR SDK just uses a subset of the standard "Brown's model" lens distortion correction formula, just like most image processing software uses, so that could be difficult to patent without some creative legal wrangling that may cause more harm than good.

While it might seem almost a bit ridiculous to have a patent based on image warping considering it's not a new technique, if it was never specifically used for HMDs, then I wouldn't be surprised if it was a patentable technology. As an example of what the patent system in the US allows: If someone patents a chemical compound for use as a cleaning agent, and another person discovers that it can be used to cure cancer, it can be patented again by the second "inventor" as a new and unique invention.

[WiredEarp]

Seriously, I don't see how even the Rifts optics can be patented (or at least in a patent that will stand up in court). There is so much prior art and its not like the lens design is revolutionary.

Same with prewarping the imagery, this has been known for a long time and done in hardware in the past. Lots of commentators on here have probably predicted it as well, since its been fairly obvious that as computer horsepower increased, that prewarping the imagery in software would become much more viable. I think that its even mentioned in one of my old VR books I have lying around. It hasn't been done on comsumer HMD's previously, as it would render them incompatible with most games, without a driver like Vireio etc.

I'd say Oculus should get all the patents it can, but i doubt ones like this would fly in court if they tried to use it to restrict competition. However, I think its important companies protect themselves, otherwise someone else (with more money for legal stuff) could then get those 'obvious' patents, and possibly at least try to use it to cut their feet out from under them.

[geekmaster]

... I'd say Oculus should get all the patents it can, but i doubt ones like this would fly in court if they tried to use it to restrict competition. However, I think its important companies protect themselves, otherwise someone else (with more money for legal stuff) could then get those 'obvious' patents, and possibly at least try to use it to cut their feet out from under them.

Maybe they can do like Apple did, and patent colors and shapes and numbers and stuff...

[Direlight]

Oculus has SDK on lockdown (copyright and TM).

Rift is open source as well (kind of). The other guys would need to have their own developers as well.

Main problem with current design is, without dual screens or 1 extra wide screen, Rift will always be at 50% display resolution while requiring full resolution GPU power, that's actually really bad.

Special screens will have to be *engineered* to have the specs needed.. That's exactly what 3d monitors did. My ASUS VG278HE is a perfect example of a "vr/3d" specced display, it's simple too big It even goes in a 2ms hyper response mode to eliminate motion blur--rift does similar thing to a lesser extent.

To eliminate all eye strain the screen must be

1080p pixel count
Native 120hz or higher @ 1080p (need dvi-d)
5 to 6 inches (best spatial resolution according to Palmer)
Thin & Light
"3d mode" feature that eliminates motion blur


Built in shutter glasses in theory would give us 1080p, but now were back to distorted colors and light--new shutter glasses are supposedly being worked on though that operate at 240hz and let in more light, as well as passive solutions being worked on.


I'm currently willing to sacrifice 50% light for basically DOUBLE the performance. No one runs their settings at full brightness anyway. Maybe make it an option even, 2 rift variants.

Don't say 4k screens either as lol at $5-10,000 GPU prices for that. Even in 2 years 4k is still not possible in 3d.

My point about the screens is that nothing to steal until Oculus has more custom hardware like the above.
Like someone mentioned, right now it's custom code, modded IMU, and lenses.

*everything* else is available at best buy just about or online.

Positional tracking will add a lot more IP and "next-gen" to the device.

[geekmaster]

... Native 120hz or higher @ 1080p (need dvi-d) ...

DVI-D cables come in both Single-Link and Dual-Link. The distinguishing feature of DVI-D is that it is MISSING the analog VGA pins (surrounding the spade lug) on the connector.

Some video cards allow running 1080p@120Hz over Single-Link DVI (which is within the bandwidth limits of Single-Link DVI cables), but many do not, and not all monitors support 120Hz over Single-Link DVI.

Radeon HD 7970 Dual-X 3GB OC GPUs ... ...One of which is just a single-link DVI port, but I've found it actually pumps out 120Hz... So, I'm not complaining.

Some video card drivers go so far as switching to Dual-Link mode for any 120Hz mode, even 640x480.

Using Dual-Link DVI is much more likely to have less problems.



You probably meant Dual-Link DVI, and DVI-D was just a typo. But now we have defined the correct terminology, so nobody goes out and buys the wrong cable and spends countless hours figuring out why it does not work...

[Direlight]

Almost no one talking about 3d displays and DVI-D means the crappy one.

[blazespinnaker]

Oculus has SDK on lockdown (copyright and TM).

Well, you can't copyright APIs, so that will be a meagre IP wall at best. The only way they can make that a significant hurdle is actually putting some meat behind the SDK (create a platform people can build content on).

The rest of the oculus rift is basically leep + IMU.

There's enough prior art on the leep, so really it's all about the IMU.

I will say one thing, it's pretty rough they lost one of their founding engineers (and in such an awful way) who could have lead building out the SDK as a platform. That could fundamentally alter the direction they go in.

[MSat]

Since the SDK needs to be compiled with the application, using any other HMD with said software would be a violation of the Oculus license, though I don't know if there's any legal ground to sue another manufacturer for making compatible hardware. The only way to circumvent that is if developers started using some 3rd party SDK, which I don't see happening any time soon.

At any rate, and as I stated above, no newcomer would be able to encroach on Oculus' tiny but expanding market as long as they're using similar technology. It would probably take significant technological advancements and therefore a large investment to beat Oculus at their own game. Unless that happens, the only place (though potentially major) Oculus stands to lose is in the console realm should MS and/or Sony decide to roll out their own device. However, patents would go a long way towards protecting them there.

[PalmerTech]

The Rift design form does not appear to be Palmer's original idea.
Checkout http://ict.usc.edu/prototypes/immersive-viewer/
And the lower FOV hasbro toy http://www.hasbro.com/hasbromy3d/en_US/

It seems like Oculus has a great team but given the simplicity of the device and the apparent lack of intellectual property I wonder if we'll see a flock of competitors hit the market with essentially the same product.
Good for users. May not be so good for Oculus investors.

I had working prototypes of the Rift before I joined ICT, or even met anyone there. The "Socket" HMD on that page is an almost exact clone of the first Rift prototype, down to using the same LCD display and drive electronics.

Those other immersive displays all branch off from my early high field of view, single display prototypes.

[blazespinnaker]

Since the SDK needs to be compiled with the application, using any other HMD with said software would be a violation of the Oculus license, though I don't know if there's any legal ground to sue another manufacturer for making compatible hardware. The only way to circumvent that is if developers started using some 3rd party SDK, which I don't see happening any time soon.

Plenty of ways around this. Injection certainly is one workable approach. It's also not hard to imagine applications pushing out code which integrates with the HMD into a pluggable module. Why would they want to restrict themselves to one HMD?

Oculus stands to lose is in the console realm should MS and/or Sony decide to roll out their own device. However, patents would go a long way towards protecting them there.

I really don't see patents protecting them against MS or Sony.

Palmer is a great guy (no offense dude), but he's not a PHd / VR Research who's invested years and millions of dollars in this. The history is right here on mtbs3d (and archived by many of us).

Any patents are going to be pretty thin.

What Oculus does have going for them is brand though. If Sony or MS tried to simply copy what Oculus did, it would tarnish their brand significantly.

And frankly, if OculusVR started patenting left and right, I think they'd find little sympathy from the community regarding their plight.

Patent Examiners aren't as gullible as we all like to make them out to be. And the VR industry has gone through a very significant round of prior art / patents for them to draw upon.

[Direlight]

Well, you can't copyright APIs, so that will be a meagre IP wall at best. The only way they can make that a significant hurdle is actually putting some meat behind the SDK (create a platform people can build content on).

You can copyright anything almost. I read the entire FAQ from the copyright office and things like this SDK are probably dervitive works.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work

[blazespinnaker]

Maybe. We'll see how this plays out in appeals:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-575869 ... criticism/

[Direlight]

I followed this thing pretty closely, correct me if I'm wrong ,

You worked for the military on VR, but obviously different units since those were over 10,000 dollars and now they're purchasing Rifts like they're new models from you. You also had a bunch of VR headsets that you attempted to Frankenstein together. After unsatisfactory results you built the 2d, and then 3d models from parts you had there from fixing phones etc.

You posted it here I think and Carmack wanted to look at it, pretty much randomly. He then saw where you were going with the spherical lens warping for wider FoV and then got the idea to correct for this using the software.

Then it was at e3, and now you got millions, so it's not yours somehow!(lol, jk!)

Anyone staking a claim on this who didn't directly advise or fund Palmer have no business saying he can't legally protect unique system designs of his & Brendan's team.


If I made something for release, yes I'm going to copyright it at the minimum.

Side note...
Palmer, feel free to sue the NSA/O'bama adminstration, after all they admitted they're looking at your PRIVATELY CLASSIFIED IP. Yes, if you wish you can have things legally classified (type of copyright) and even the government can't look at it. It's blacked out when you send it in even.


Any business in the US can legally protect certain things like a computer hard drive with IP on it. Don't think you won't see knock off Rifts being made by multi-nationals. Kickstarter like projects will be demonized any time now, it's starting to threaten the establishment more & more, same with BitCoin.

I wouldn't use US banks either, might go MF Global on ya.

[blazespinnaker]

Plus all the zillions of head tracking patents, starting with this one:

http://www.google.ca/patents/US5373857# ... -citations

[WiredEarp]

@ Direlight: As I said previously, I'm pretty sure that the concept of prewarping imagery for display on another device is a rather old idea, and not something that Carmack come up with himself. Doing it in software is just something that has been waiting for CPU power to increase to a decent level.

For other examples of similar tech, look at stuff like NTHUSIM. Similar sort of thing - prewarping imagery to fit onto curved screens etc.

[Direlight]

Yes, no one is claiming Carmack invented lens/image distortion, nor did I say that. I said Carmack had the idea to CORRECT FOR IT in a game which is actually an old projector trick for curved screens.


You can use the rift just fine without warping (literally just tried this) it just makes things appear more natural at the edges.

The way it's implemented though (on this type of device) is patentable, you're patenting the whole design, not each component or feature.


You can drill holes on a sheet of metal and patent it, look it up.

[Direlight]

Btw, thst device was not like the Rift, you're just showing random HMD, ALL OF them have the same basic design, that's called engineering.

Rift has it's own features, you can't claim wireless hydra is just a wiimote, even though they both work on similar principals and have the same function.

I used a Rift-like (personal) HMD for the sega saturn back in like '96, and it was similar design to Rift but it was too low res.

Anyone could of done what palmer did, he said that 100's of times, they didn't he wins end of story.

Btw, maybe NASA should of sold that HMD to same game developers and they might of made enough money to still have jobs.

[blazespinnaker]

True, you can patent the whole design absolutely. Those sorts of patents are laughably easy to get around, because you just change one element of your design.

For a patent to be of value, it must have claims which don't require the whole design.

[WiredEarp]

Carmack implemented corrective warping in Doom3, I dont think that is the same as having the idea.

Pretty sure that even back when Palmer was even talking about his new design he mentioned that the graphics would need a warper. I'm sure he'll correct me if i'm wrong though, it was a while ago.

Re patenting things as a unit, what BlazeSpinnaker said is my understanding based on what my mate with a few patents told me. If you patent the whole unit as one thing, then its easy for someone to change some elements of your design to bypass it. I'm in no way knowledgeable about patents though.

All HMD's do not have the same basic design, but most designs have been done already. The Rift is basically IMHO just a monoscopic HMD design, modified to use SBS. In fact, if you look at Palmers history, one of the Rifts predecessors was a monoscopic HMD using a VRG? (sorry, can't remember if thats the correct acronym, even though I have one) helmet HMD.

I'm sure there are lots of design specifics with the Rift that can be patented. However, if Oculus is successful, I dont think it will be because they restrict competition using patents, but more because they keep innovating, providing strong support to developers, and keep being the name everyone thinks of in terms of consumer VR.

[Direlight]

Carmack implemented corrective warping in Doom3, I dont think that is the same as having the idea.

Just lol, I give up.

Go back and read what I wrote please, you're literally arguing points I all ready noted.

As for this thread, it's boring and pretty much turned into "you can't patent stuff!"

Corporations patent your genes, end of line.

[MSat]

Here's a patent from 2007 that pertains to rendering a scene with a narrow FOV and a wide FOV, stitching and warping them for display on what is essentially a Rift HMD

http://www.google.com/patents/US2008017 ... YQ6AEwBThG

[geekmaster]

Corporations patent your genes, end of line.

Not any more.

On June 13, in a rare unanimous decision, the court struck down some of those patents, ruling that human DNA, as a naturally occurring form of matter, is not patentable. The decision was heralded by many, including Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health, as “a victory for all those eagerly awaiting more individualized, gene-based approaches to medical care.”

Except in the special cDNA case...

[PalmerTech]

I said Carmack had the idea to CORRECT FOR IT in a game which is actually an old projector trick for curved screens.

He did not, actually. There were several pieces of software working with my Rift prototypes using native distortion correction before Carmack did it, and I also got it working in standard SBS 3D compatible software by using projector warping tools.

Carmack did a lot to help this project, but I assure you, the idea (and implementation) to warp games to work in the Rift was around a long time before he got his!