Trends member Neer Sharma has been rounding up the best corporate patents every week for his must-read newsletter Patent Drop.
Here are recent findings:
With this new patent, fintech giant PayPal wants to facilitate payments within augmented reality (AR) glasses:
“Imagine you’re wearing AR glasses as you walk down the street. A stranger passes you by in a cool, pastel-painted, vintage bicycle.
As you look at it, a message appears in your AR glasses – “this is for sale for $100!”. You think to yourself – “wow, this completes my nomad, hipster garments. I gotta buy it”. And through your AR glasses, you make an offer on the bicycle.”
In anticipation of a world where car sharing is ubiquitous, Ford has a patent for “odor mitigation”.
The automaker is offering up 2 potential solutions:
Amazon’s convenience store (Go) already lets customers enter, shop, and exit without using checkout. Off-the-shelf items are automatically tallied via computer vision and AI.
A recent patent from the company adds a new wrinkle: it wants to let customers do “no checkout” with customized orders like a made-to-order deli sandwich.
Sounds delicious (and convenient).