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Facebook Buys 100 Patents To Spur Virtual Reality, Video, Speech

This article is more than 9 years old.

When it comes to inventing the future, Google is getting all the headlines these days over initiatives like self-driving cars -- but maybe it's time to watch Facebook, too. The big social network lately has acquired at least 100 patents from other companies, relating to hot areas such as virtual reality, video, peer-to-peer printing and speech translation .

A new report by Envision IP, a New York-based research firm specializing in intellectual property, analyzes patent purchases by Facebook since January 2013. As Envision IP's founder and managing director, Maulin Shah, points out, these purchases may offer clues about where Facebook's product roadmap might be headed next, including possibilities that range from "digital printing services to interactive wearable devices."

The heaviest source of patent purchases (54) is from Fujifilm, Envision IP finds. These patents primarily cover image and video compression, as well as image playback, image editing and presentation. There's also one for a point-of-sale terminal for printing images.

Facebook's data center in Prineville, Oregon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Facebook also has bought 22 patents from AT&T, relating to everything from personalized content delivery to determining relationships within a social network. Another leading source of acquired patents is Vega Vista, which sold 10 patents relating to head and motion tracking technologies and virtual displays.

In some areas, Facebook's lawyers may simply be playing it safe, securing full intellectual property rights to areas that have long interested the Menlo Park, Calif., company. For example, Facebook bought six patents relating to mobile check-in, which had been developed years ago by inventor Neeraj Jhanji.

In areas such as speech translation and facial recognition, however, the recent patent acquisitions suggest that Facebook may have big new ideas in store , too. For example, Facebook earlier this year spent $2 billion to buy Oculus Rift, a startup offering virtual-reality video games. Speculation is plentiful about that initiative's next direction, and the patent purchases will make the guessing game even more intense.

Meanwhile, as Envision IP notes, Facebook's in-house engineering team hasn't been shying away from the U.S. Patent Office. Facebook's yearly submissions totaled just  69 in 2009, but they boomed to 649 in 2012, the most recent year for which comprehensive data is available. (Patent applications often aren't published until a year or more after they are filed, making it hard to track recent patent-filing activity.)

An update will follow with any additional comments that Facebook may offer.