More 3D Patents Emerge in Our IP Search, Some for Film-Based Systems
As part of our ongoing search of 3D patents, we looked at filings made by pioneering and prolific inventor Lenny Lipton after he left RealD. That company often is confusingly named on patents applications as Real D (CED March 16 p7). RealD took over Lipton’s StereoGraphics Corp. in 2005. Lipton left about three years later to join another 3D venture called Oculus3D.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
We found no U.S. or international patent filings on 3D under the Oculus name, but the Los Angeles company’s website describes its “OculR” system as an “easy to install and use 35-mm polarized light stereoscopic 3D film system based on a unique format and projection lens.” That system would let theater operators use existing film-based equipment to deliver 3D to audiences, without the need to upgrade to more costly “digital” 3D projection systems, Oculus said. With a special OculR lens plus 3D movies printed on conventional 35-mm film, smaller operators could upgrade their theaters at less cost than what would be spent on the digital systems available from other vendors, Oculus claims. Its system seems similar in technique and purpose to one called Technicolor 3D that Technicolor publicized at last week’s ShoWest in Las Vegas (CED March 16 p6).
We found 24 U.S. patent applications naming Lipton as inventor and without any reference to StereoGraphics or Real D. The majority of these have converted to granted patents assigned either to StereoGraphics or Real D. But we noted two applications of special interest and no mention of StereoGrapics or Real D, which were filed around the time Lipton left RealD. The U.S. Patent Office indexes show these applications as not yet converted to granted patents.
U.S. application 2009/0246404 was filed by Lipton and three other inventors in March 2008, and claims an “enhanced projection screen” of the type used in movie theaters for polarized-light 3D projection. The aim is to design a screen that accurately maintains the cross polarity of the projected left and right images, and over a wide viewing angle. Lipton and his co-inventors claimed success with a paint gun that propels aluminum flakes through a mixture of AC and DC magnetic fields. The AC shakes the flakes, much as the bias in a tape recorder shakes up the tape-coating particles, and the DC field orients the flakes in an orderly fashion as they adhere to the screen surface.
U.S. 2008/0273081 also was filed in March 2008, by Lipton alone. It claims a “Business system for two and three dimensional snapshots.” A photographer takes conventional 2D digital snapshots and sends them to a “service bureau” that converts the images to a 3D format which matches a home display format, like an autostereoscopic digital picture-frame for no-glasses 3D viewing.
Interestingly, an earlier related application names Lipton as sole inventor, but also names Real D as assigned owner. This March 2007 application, U.S. 2008/0226281, claims a “Business system for two and three dimensional snapshots” and describes a service bureau system for re-formatting stereo snapshots to suit the photographer’s choice from a selection of 3D display and print options.
Separately, Oculus thinks 3D glasses with biodegradable frames “are coming,” CEO Marty Shindler told movie theater owners at ShoWest. Schindler didn’t respond right away to our queries about when Oculus will introduce them, or how much they will cost compared with ordinary 3D glasses. Replacing 10 million pairs of ordinary 3D glasses with eyewear containing biodegradable frames can reduce the greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to burning 50,000 gallons of gasoline or 970 barrels of oil, Shindler said. “And 10 million pairs is, like, insignificant,” he said. “I think the numbers on Avatar were something like 60 or 70 million pairs, and a lot of those are now sitting in landfills.”