Magic Leap is gaining popularity each day as a startup, thanks to original ideas and willingness to pair with companies. Nreal is another competing startup that chose to take the same rout as Magic Leap. In fact, the business itself and the product they have shown on multiple occasion matches The Magic Leap One.
This caught the eye of many, but no larger attention was paid than Magic Leap themselves. They swiftly took action and filed a lawsuit against Nreal founder Chi Xu. Xu worked as a software engineer for Magic Leap from the summer of 2015 to August of the following year. Even though Xu signed “a Proprietary Information and Inventions Agreement (‘PIIA’) that contained a broad proscription against the improper use or disclosure of any of Magic Leap’s confidential and proprietary information during or after his employment,” he still took information with him. If you are looking for a full document of the lawsuit, you can find that below.
He took enough of their plans to startup his own company named “Nreal” with the contacts he has in China. The suit goes on to say that Xu “wrongfully used and disclosed to Nreal and its collaborators the confidential and proprietary information to which he obtained access as a former Magic Leap employee.” Those are not light accusations, enough to crumble an entire startup company.
The suit goes on to make claims against Chi XU by saying “Mr. Xu used his knowledge of Magic Leap’s Confidential Information, including but not limited to the Confidential Designs, to make production and design decisions at Nreal and to guide the development of spatial computing products intended for sale,” it goes on to say. “The resulting product, as demonstrated at CES and on publicly available videos, bears a striking similarity to the Confidential Designs that Magic Leap had under development before and during the time that Mr. Xu worked at Magic Leap, but which were not ultimately commercialized or publicly released. Whereas Nreal purported to develop its Nreal Light product in under two years, Magic Leap developed its technology after extensive investment of time (multiple years), money (hundreds of millions of dollars spent on research and development) and human resources (hundreds of engineers).”
These accusations aren’t looking to favorable for Xu, as the similarities between the two startups continue to appear. For example, check out the two logos for the augmented reality glasses. The two fonts share striking resemblance as they both are curved and no capital letters.
It is hard to see a scenario where Xu walks out of this lawsuit without a scratch. Although the odds are stacked against him, you can check out this video of him explains his new piece of eyewear, and how it compares to the “rivaled” Magic Leap One.
In this video, he says some interesting things, although they have been used against him in the lawsuit. They reference this video by saying the following.
“Mr. Xu asserted his view that Magic Leap is ‘too ambitious’ and ‘trying just a little bit too hard,’ and he characterized Magic Leap’s product development strategy as follows: ‘in some way, they are trying to build something that can replace a cell phone in the first generation, which is kind of like mission impossible.’ Mr. Xu continued with his characterization of Magic Leap’s product development strategy, saying ‘[t]hey are trying to bundle pretty much everything in the [device] making that bigger and bigger.’ While Mr. Xu attempted to differentiate the Nreal Lite from Magic Leap’s products currently on public sale, in reality, the Nreal Light incorporates and derives from the Confidential Designs and other Magic Leap Confidential Information protected by the PIIA.”
