Name the product, then the record that widens the frame. The augmented-reality glasses narrative collapses to two names: Apple and Meta. But the patent record is broader. LG Electronics' granted patent US11409112B2, "Electronic device using an augmented reality," issued August 9, 2022, claims an AR device built around combiner optics. Its CPC tags G02B 27/0176 (optical combiner with light guide) and G02B 27/0172 place it firmly in the AR-glasses optics art.
What it costs, who owns it. The optical combiner — the element that lets you see the real world and a projected image at once — is the defining, hardest, most expensive component of AR glasses. Waveguide optics, which pipe light across a transparent lens to your eye, are the leading approach and a deep patent thicket. LG holding combiner-optics IP means the supply chain and IP landscape for AR glasses includes display-and-optics specialists, not just the headline platforms.
Why the wider field matters: AR glasses are a components story as much as a brand story. The platforms that eventually ship glasses will assemble optics, displays, and sensors that draw on IP held across many companies — LG, Samsung Display, Magic Leap, and others. Reading only the platform patents misses where the enabling technology actually lives.
Three records, one pair of glasses: the combiner optics, the display engine, and the rendering software. A shipping AR product integrates IP from across that stack, and a grant like LG's is a node in it.
Scope, stated carefully: this is a granted patent to LG on a specific AR-device optical arrangement, within an enormous AR-optics landscape. It evidences the breadth of the field, not control of AR glasses.
Follow the filing, not the keynote stage. When AR glasses finally ship from the big platforms, the optics will trace through a supply chain and IP landscape that includes companies like LG — whose 2022 grant shows it was in the AR-optics game all along.