Walk the independent claim. Lumus's grant US11500143B2, "Augmented reality imaging system" (issued November 15, 2022; inventor Yochay Danziger), is a granted patent. Its CPC anchor is again G02B 27/0172 — head-mounted-display optics — but the company behind it pursues a distinct optical philosophy worth flagging.
The element that does the work is the reflective approach. Most AR waveguides are diffractive: they use nanostructured gratings to bend light into and out of the guide, which can introduce color and efficiency tradeoffs. Lumus's reflective-waveguide architecture uses embedded partial mirrors instead. The claim protects an imaging system built on that reflective approach, a genuinely different bet from the diffractive mainstream.
What it reads on is an AR headset or smart-glasses display built on reflective-waveguide optics, the architecture Lumus licenses to device makers. As an optics IP licensor rather than a consumer brand, Lumus's value is precisely in claims like this — they define the technology others must license or design around.
Scope discipline: the claim protects the recited reflective imaging system, not AR displays in general. A headset using diffractive waveguides operates in a different optical regime and would likely not read on it. The defensible element is the reflective architecture — which is exactly what distinguishes Lumus's IP from Magic Leap's or Meta's diffractive portfolios.
Granted status matters because it makes the reflective-waveguide position enforceable. For a device maker choosing between diffractive and reflective AR optics, this grant is part of the freedom-to-operate calculus on the reflective side — and the choice of optical architecture is partly a choice of which patent thicket to enter.
For a landscape analyst, the contrast is the story: the AR optics field is not one technology with many claimants but at least two technologies — diffractive and reflective — with different IP holders. Lumus's 2022 grant marks the reflective camp, and reading the field requires knowing which camp a given claim belongs to.