Solos Technology Limited, a subsidiary of Solos Incorporation, has filed a District of Massachusetts complaint against EssilorLuxottica and Meta Platforms (1:26-cv-10304), alleging infringement of five "smart eyewear" patents. The plaintiff targets the provision of "wearable smart glasses marketed under the 'Meta RayBan' and 'Oakley Meta' brands, including but not limited to, the Stories, Wayfarer Gen 1, Wayfarer Gen 2, Skyler Gen 2, Headliner Gen 2, Display, Oakley Meta HSTN, and all variants and derivative versions thereof".
Solos, a Hong Kong corporation, pleads that its "origins trace to Kopin Corporation ('Kopin'), a Massachusetts-based, publicly traded company listed on the NASDAQ and a recognized pioneer in microdisplays, wearable-computing components, and head-worn systems". After alleged years of joint development as well as a Solos effort to "execut[e] an ambitious intellectual-property strategy" begun in 2015, Kopin announced in September 2019 the sale to Solos of "all assets associated with the Solos smart-glasses product line and the Whisper audio-processing technology", including related patents.
The plaintiff also lays out a history of purported interactions with the defendants and those with knowledge of Solos development efforts, dating back to 2015, including by named inventor Ernesto Martinez, who "led wearable product development at Kopin". Solos focuses in particular on the past of Priyanka Shekar, an apparent "Product Manager at Meta"; per the complaint "MIT Sloan Fellow [Shekar] had conducted an indepth research study beginning in 2020, analyzing Solos' AirGo system and evaluating Solos' differentiated audio, beamforming, and wearable computing architecture". Her later hire allegedly "gave Meta internal access to a well-developed study of Solos' patented technologies and their relevance to smart-glasses development".
The asserted patents (10,306,389; 10,651,866; 11,082,055; 11,871,174; 12,216,339) belong to three separate families with earliest estimated priority dates in March 2013, August 2016, and December 2018, respectively. Per Solos, "Between 2015 and 2019, Solos and Kopin filed a series of patent applications that captured foundational architectures for directional audio projection, fractional delay and oversampled sensor beamforming, personalized audio rendering, and multimodal wearable assistance systems", and "[t]hese filings did not claim isolated or incremental improvements. Instead, they documented holistic system designs that combined acoustic chambers, speaker structures, advanced beamforming, sensor arrays, and on-device context processing into unified smarteyewear platforms".
Solos pleads in a footnote that "EssilorLuxottica S.A. is a global eyewear conglomerate formed in 2018 through the merger of Essilor International S.A. and Luxottica Group S.p.A." but that "[t]he precise nature, scope, and extent of the relationships among these entities, including the allocation of responsibilities for U.S.-directed activities, lines of reporting, the existence and allocation of any U.S.-focused decision-making authority, product development and architecture decisions, U.S. commercialization strategies, and the flow of revenues and profits derived from U.S. sales and operations, are not presently known to Plaintiff".
Solos discloses that it is a wholly owned subsidiary of Solos Incorporation (a privately held Cayman Islands corporation) and that Kopin (a public Delaware corporation) "owns 10% or more of its parent's stock. Current USPTO records suggest that Solos holds more than 60 US patents with prosecution of more than half that number of applications proceeding underway. This case appears to be the first to see these assets litigated. Caldwell IP LLC (out of Boston, Massachusetts) filed the complaint for Solos. The case has been assigned to District Judge Indira Talwani. 1/23, District of Massachusetts.
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