Where’s the IP in Meta’s metaverse?

If you were looking, by June 2020, you would have spotted that Facebook, as it was then, was fundamentally changing its research strategy and technical focus (figure 1).

Since the acquisition of start-up Oculus VR in 2014 for $2 billion, the company’s emphasis on virtual, augmented and mixed reality patent activity had steadily climbed until for the first time in 2018, it outnumbered annual filings focused on social media technology.

On October 28, 2021, 16 months later, the company’s founder Mark Zuckerberg announced a switch in focus to development of the metaverse and renamed the company Meta. On the same day, it filed a trademark registration for the new brand at the US Patent and Trademark Office.

With this announcement, intense discussion about the nature of this shift, the fundamentals of the technology, the basic question of what is the metaverse, and the role of intellectual property in an even more online world all are naturally asked.