Recently, Zugara, an AR technology company based in California, USA, filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Chanel in the Western District Court of Texas, alleging that the latter's virtual makeup try-on tool (VIRTUALTRY-ON) illegally uses its real-time human tracking and digital overlay technology.

The patent in question is U.S. Patent No. 10,482,517 (“Providing a simulation of wearing items such as clothing and/or accessories”), which enables real-time capture of a user's facial position and orientation to dynamically overlay virtual makeup effects. Zugara claims that Chanel's website tutorials induce consumers to use the infringing interface, constituting contributory infringement, and seeks damages and a permanent injunction.

This is not the first time Zugara has filed a lawsuit over this patent. In February this year, Zugara sued Estée Lauder in the Eastern District of Texas, and the two parties reached a settlement and withdrew the lawsuit on July 9.

AR patent litigation is currently escalating:

While Google filed a declaratory judgment action against EyesMatch in the Northern District of California, its subsidiary Niantic (developer of Pokémon GO) is also being sued by Imagine AR in Delaware;

Niantic is also involved in another patent lawsuit in the Northern District of California: NantWorks accused it of infringing on its mobile device AR object mapping technology (U.S. Patent No. 10,664,518). In January 2023, the court issued a summary judgment, ruling that the patent in question was invalid due to excessive abstraction.

Lennel Image Technologies' virtual makeup trial lawsuits against retailers such as Macy's and Ulta Beauty led to several e-commerce platforms removing related features.

Meta was sued by Mullen Industries over eight location-based AR game patents (patent numbers 8,585,476; 9,744,448; 10,179,277; 10,828,559; 10,967,270; 11,033,821; 11,376,493; and 12,019,791) has been sued by Mullen Industries. Meta has filed a request for multi-party reexamination with the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, with the final ruling expected to be announced by the end of September.

The large-scale lawsuit initiated by Virtual Immersion Technologies involves a total of 43 defendants, including VRChat and General Dynamics.