Protecting Intellectual Property in Augmented Reality

Both AR and VR will undoubtedly bring a whole set of novel IP issues for individuals, companies, IP practitioners and the courts. Like any new technological area, such as cyber law for the nascent internet technology in the early 1990s, many legal issues need to be addressed and many more are yet to be discovered as this area evolves.

AR and VR are sometimes used in overlapping ways, but each presents unique IP law issues. AR keeps the real world as the backdrop and enhances it with digital details, layering new strata of perception and supplementing one’s reality or environment with additional material. The digital details could be anything that may be perceived by the five senses: touch, sound, taste, scent or vision. The most common and most developed AR is visual information. Unlike AR, VR is a way to generate realistic images, sounds and other sensations that put you smack in the middle of an imaginary world. VR is a new world built from the ground up. VR is the primary technology for the metaverse, which will be comprised of virtual worlds.

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