Apple’s Vision Pro: Pioneering tech ‘sidesteps’ patent suits
During the launch of the Apple Vision Pro on June 5, vice president of Apple’s technology development group, Mike Rockwell, said the headset was “backed by 5,000 patents”.
In fact, a review of Apple’s portfolio from 2013 to 2023 by Dolcera reveals 6,027 patents associated with the device, drawing from a broad range of technology areas.
This large suite of patents protects many key innovations that were revealed for the first time at the launch event. These include a customisable aluminium alloy frame, ultra-high-resolution displays delivering a 4K visual “experience”, spatial audio, eye-tracking technology, optic ID authentication, and a new visionOS operating system.
Patent brick walls
Apple says its headset is the most ‘inventive consumer tech product ever made’. Given the smartphone wars that followed the release of its most famous tech milestone, the iPhone, is litigation baked into the rollout of this device too?
“Of course,” says Silicon Valley patent attorney Stephen Zweig. “They've been facing this with their smartphone technology since 2007.”
But Apple’s tech used in the Vision Pro is “unique”, he adds. Zweig describes Apple’s approach to virtual reality as one of “brute force, and massive computational ability”, setting it apart from previous attempts at virtual reality headsets by Google, Microsoft, and Meta.
Powered by an M2 processor and an R1 chip, the headset uses lenses to image the peripheral vision areas, which diverges from the traditional augmented reality approach, Zweig explains.
“The bias in the field was to always have augmented reality where there are at least portions that are partially transparent and allow you to see the area around you—up until the Vision Pro.”
Protecting the parts that make it ‘Apple’
Mark Richardson, a partner at Keltie, views Apple’s approach to the headset as “building a complete user experience which encompasses both hardware and software so all parts work together to deliver a more polished product.”
“For the Vision Pro in particular they’ve stuffed it full of some ridiculously powerful hardware that has the processing grunt to make the experience smooth,” said Richardson.
“They also seem to be regarding the Vision Pro in some use cases as a replacement for a desktop computer. So, it’s not just a headset, it’s basically a full computer system (display and processor) in a wearable form factor.”
Richardson’s colleague Richard Lawrence, says the company is following a familiar strategy of combining tech to create a new consumer device. Although this time Apple has protected the parts that make it an ‘Apple’ product.
