What They Say
Patently Apple reported that the USPTO has awarded a patent to the Cupertino company that allows the use of a display with lenticular lenses to show different content to different users. The patent suggests that the different content might include a censored version of a show to a younger viewer.
What We Think
It’s at moments like this that I realise how tricky it must be to be a patent lawyer. I saw my first lenticular-based 3D display in around 1995 and I have seen lots since. It’s not obvious to me, after scanning this one, why it is novel, but I guess that’s why patent lawyers are well paid! Perhaps it is related to the use of metadata to identify who can see what.
Of course, most lenticular displays are intended to separate right and left eye images to show autostereoscopic 3D. However the idea of different images is also not new and I remember Sharp and others showing parallax barrier technologies that could show different images when viewed from different directions. That idea can be used in a vehicle where, for example, it is illegal for a driver to see video, while a passenger can. It has also been used in digital signage and wayfinding so that people approaching from different directions see different content. (BR)
