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Samsung patents smart contact lenses with a built-in camera
- aetherson 11y agoAnyone who takes this to mean that "in the next ten years, it will be possible to produce a contact lens that has a camera and a powered display capable of any resolution that involves like triple-digits pixels in the horizontal and vertical, and, god forfend, an actual battery for both, for any price including $50M per lens," is dreaming.
- godzillabrennus 11y agoThat's right. Apple will make the first popular one and it'll cost $500 a pair, and require an upgrade each year.
- extrapickles 11y agoIf it was $500/year, I would get them in a heartbeat as contacts currently cost $150-300/year, depending on fanciness (monthly/weekly/daily replacement, coatings, etc)
- themartorana 11y agoYup. I was just thinking how inexpensive $500 sounded. Will they work with hydrogen peroxide based solution or do I need to upgrade?
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago$500 for a pair of contacts that only need replacing once a year? I'd buy that even without the camera.
- guimarin 11y agoI think you mean soft contacts. You can buy hard contacts that last a year right now.
- themartorana 11y agoUm... There are year-long-wear soft contacts for well below $500.
- simonebrunozzi 11y agoAnd will have a proprietary USB type E connector. Or something like that.
- dec0dedab0de 11y agowell if they don't get it in 20 years, doesn't the patent expire?
- ommunist 11y agoAha... Vernor Vinge predicted the device. I never realised the future can become past so fast.
- shostack 11y agoRainbow's End is one of my favorite books, and he predicts quite a bit in it. Patent question--could something like Rainbow's End ever be used to invalidate this patent?
- noonespecial 11y agoIt has at least been suggested in the "Donald Duck cartoon raising a ship" patent: http://www.iusmentis.com/patents/priorart/donaldduck/ http://www.iusmentis.com/patents/priorart/donaldduck/ At the very least, it strikes a serious blow against the novelty aspect.
- dekhn 11y agoScience fiction works are not prior art.
- sitkack 11y agoThey are when the patent is on a concept, not an implementation.
- dekhn 11y agoThere isn't such a thing as a concept patent. Concepts are copyrighted. You may be thinking of design patents. Citation to utility patent overturned by prior art from science fiction, please?
- sitkack 11y agoSo how can one patent something one can't actually build. I would call that a concept patent.
- gene-h 11y agoOf course just because they have the patent does not mean it will actually work or that we have the technology to do so.
- gregmac 11y agoOkay Samsung, you now have 1 year to demonstrate a working prototype or significant progress and effort spent building towards one, or you lose your patent. At least that's how it should work.... sigh.
- tgb 11y agoYup, and the article's fancy header graphic? It's of the Google diabetes-monitoring contact lens project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contact_Lens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contact_Lens Definitely not misleading...
- djrogers 11y agoSomeone really ought to start patenting every awesome piece of technology that we love from sci-fi, then license them for free to anyone who can actually use them. Maybe we could get a kickstarter going for it! I say we start with battlemechs and work our way down from there.
- shmerl 11y agoDoesn't the patent imply realistic implementation? I don't think you can patent just anything without any idea how to make it. For example a teleporter? I agree however that preemptive defensive patents that are released for free is a good idea.
- djrogers 11y agoI seriously doubt Samsung has any the ability to overcome the hurdles in storage, communication, and video projection to make these in a reasonable timeframe either.
- Bluestrike2 11y agoThey'd also require significant advances in materials science in order to get to the point where they can even try and overcome those hurdles. Bionic contact lenses are going to be hard enough to develop. Including viable camera functionality is going to be an even greater task.
- talmand 11y agoNo, not really. There are many, many, many patents that are obviously not a working invention. You just have to be able to tell a good story and pay the fee.
- rayiner 11y agoYou need to reduce it to practice. Which means something less than a fully working product, but more than just the idea of what the product would do. You need to know how the invention works.
- dmritard96 11y agoProblem is power. Batteries are holding back the future.
- mmastrac 11y agoWireless power transmission should solve that. The larger battery can live in your jeans pocket, shirt pocket or somewhere else (all that space in your sinuses is just waiting to be used!)
- joering2 11y agonaah, just invent some irrelevant to the eye bacteria that when submersed into the eye's liquid reacts and shivers. Hookup a dynamo to its move and viola! You have a power generator! Of course minimize it all from what we can do today somewhere like 100,000 times.
- wglb 11y agoI would be nervous about RF energy directed towards the particularly sensitive parts of my eyeball.
- jimrandomh 11y agoThis is in South Korea, not the United States. While the United States patent system is dysfunctional in a similar way (granting patents for things that haven't been invented yet to parties that have not invented them), it is their patent system that this reflects badly on, not ours.
- jimrandomh 11y agoThe article has a link that looks like it should lead to the patent in question, but actually links to a page that pops up the badly-translated message: > "Is not the normal approach. After searching it uses." And then closes itself. Does anyone have a link to the patent in question?
- snailmailman 11y agoTheir website seems to have a weird linking system. I found the page in question, and because their system is weird, the "get link" button doesn't really do a normal permalink, it just gives you a goo.gl link. Whoever wrote the article in question just copied what was in the URL bar, which doesn't work for any of the patents. http://goo.gl/ZKRWCv http://goo.gl/ZKRWCv
- brooklyndude 11y agoGuess the next step is to embed them into your eyes when your are born. Built in VR.
- beambot 11y agoGoogle invents smart contact lens with built-in camera: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/180571-google-invents-smart-contact-lens-with-built-in-camera-superhuman-terminator-like-vision-here-we-come http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/180571-google-invents-sma...
- ENTP 11y agoAnd you thought google glass was creepy. This is a whole new level.