Another patent lawsuit hits Apple, this time over FaceTime eye contact

Apple has yet another patent lawsuit looming over its head. Now, the company is being accused of infringing a patent covering gaze correction, a feature that Apple uses to correct a user's eye line during FaceTime calls. 

Apple hit with yet another patent lawsuit 

It's not a rare thing for Apple to be the subject of patent infringement lawsuits. It's not even just Apple, but most tech giants are. The Cupertino giant is currently in the middle of its ongoing battle with Masimo over the Apple Watch. 

This time, it's being sued for a small FaceTime feature. The lawsuit comes from a company called EyesMatch, and started with a complaint with the Unified Patent Court on December 5. 

The company accuses Apple of infringing patent EP2,936,439. Meanwhile, the company is also suing Nvidia over the very same patent. 


Basically, the idea is that if you adjust the eyes viewed by the camera, it would appear that the user is looking straight ahead. Not exactly slightly downward as the camera sees the user. 

For video calls, this way it would appear the user is looking straight into the eyes of the other participant, mimicking eye contact. 

According to the lawsuit, EyesMatch claims Apple is infringing on its patent with this eye adjustment feature. 

The feature that Apple has is called Eye Contact, and it was introduced to FaceTime with iOS 14. It basically harnesses Apple AR to adjust the eyes so it appears the user is looking at the other participant in the call. It shows a modified viewpoint instead of the actual one that the camera sees. 

EyesMatch is suing other companies as well 

The case with EyesMatch is a curious one. EyesMatch Ltd is a patent-holding company, also referred to as a non-practicing entity. It holds quite a lot of patents, including the gaze correction one and multiple listings involving digital or virtual mirrors. 

These patents cover digital make-up mirrors, AR elements, techniques for the extraction of objects, and similar technologies. 

The main inventors of these patents are Nissi Vilcovsky and Ofer Saban, who are also the founders of the company. The two are also connected to MemoMi Lab Inc.

There are inventions from the late 2000s and the early 2010s. The patent from the Apple lawsuit was applied for in December 2013 and granted in February 2020. It is said to expire in December 2033. 

The company has brought this patent to the UPC before. It did so against Samsung in May of last year, and against Microsoft in June. Both companies settled with EyesMatch. 

In both of these instances, EyesMatch got a worldwide patent license agreement with the two companies. It's also suing Google over the same patent, but this lawsuit is yet to be concluded. 

It's very likely that the Cupertino tech giant will settle as well, but it's also possible the company may continue to fight the lawsuit. 

Currently, the lawsuit is registered in ten European countries, including some big markets like the UK, Germany, France, and Italy. 

This is likely heading toward a settlement

Honestly, whether the feature is small or not doesn't really matter to me. What matters is whether the patent is valid and whether it's actually being infringed. Eye contact correction in FaceTime does quietly improve video calls, and most users don’t think twice about how it works behind the scenes.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple ends up settling, just like Samsung and Microsoft did in similar cases. For tech giants, that's often the fastest and least disruptive option.