Last year I reported on a six nearly identical lawsuits that Lennon Image Technologies LLC filed alleging patent infringement against online retailers using webcam-based augmented reality user interfaces. Each complaint was based on the same patent: US 6,624,843 B2, issued Sep. 23, 2003 and titled “Customer Image Capture and Use Thereof in a Retailing System.” Three of those lawsuits--the ones against Boucheron, Mattel, and Tissot USA--have since been settled and dismissed. Three others--against Skullcandy Inc., Forevermark US, and Conde Nast Publications--remain pending.
Now Lennon is at it again with another seven, nearly identical lawsuits filed last month in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. (Both this court and the one in Delaware are hotbeds for this sort of litigation.) These lawsuits name Macys Inc., Bloomingdales, Ditto Technologies Inc., Fraimz LLC, Lumondi Inc., Luxottica Retail North America Inc., Safilo America Inc., and Tacori Enterprises. Again, the allegations revolve around "virtual try-on" and "magic dressing room" technology used by these retailers to give customers at home a chance to see on their computers in three dimensions what a product would look like on them.
Just as happened after the prior round of lawsuits, the defendants appear to have deactivated the features on their websites as a precaution. Whether they launch again will likely depend on how the lawsuits resolve.
This sort of litigation activity is worrisome for the nascent augmented reality industry, which is still made of almost exclusively of small, ambitious start-ups. "Magic mirror" and "virtual dressing room" technology has been a staple of early AR innovations, and (as these lawsuits demonstrate) has really begun to catch on with retailers and customers alike. On the other hand, it isn't like we didn't see this coming, either. As AR starts to attract real money, we can expect it to give rise to at least as many patent fights as the mobile phone industry is currently dealing with.
Let's just hope that litigation like this doesn't unnecessarily deter developers from pushing AR technology forward. The industry has only barely begun to scratch the surface of this technology's potential.
