Rival firms sued over the patents behind a foil illusion

A patent fight around a televised hologram-style act

On 15 May 2014, Hologram USA, Inc. filed suit against Pulse Evolution Corporation and others in the District of Nevada, docketed as a patent case before Judge Gloria Navarro. The docket shows an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order, filed the day after the complaint and denied on 16 May, followed by a motion to expedite discovery that was granted in part on 18 May, permitting inspection and videotaping of the defendant's projection technology. A first amended complaint on 29 May 2014 added Pulse Evolution and further parties; a second amended complaint followed in January 2015. A stipulation of dismissal filed in June 2016 closed the claims between the plaintiffs and the Pulse Evolution defendants, and the case was terminated on 26 April 2018.

The mechanism the case turned on

The underlying technology is not wavefront holography but a projection-and-foil illusion descended from Pepper's ghost. US Patent 7,883,212, granted in 2011 to Ian O'Connell and James Rock and assigned to Anakando Ltd, describes projecting an image onto an inclined, tensioned, partially transparent foil set at roughly 45 degrees to the projector, with a grey reflective board behind it to cut the milky haze of unimaged light. A performer standing behind the foil, correctly lit, appears to share the stage with the projected image; the audience must sit within the foil's designed viewing cone, and stage props mask the foil's edges. Rights to patents in this family, not to any single named brand, were the commercial asset in dispute, because whoever controlled them could licence or block the same illusion for future televised performances.

What the docket does and does not establish

A docket records procedural history, not a verdict on the merits: the emergency injunction was refused, the case proceeded through amended pleadings, and it ended in a negotiated dismissal rather than a published ruling on infringement. That sequence shows the dispute was resolved rather than adjudicated to a final judgment, and it does not establish which party's reading of the patent claims was correct. It does establish that, in mid-2014, at least one company believed a competitor's foil-projection performance infringed patents it held or controlled, and that a federal court thought the claim substantial enough to permit expedited, on-site inspection of a rival's rig.

• Which entity currently holds the foil-projection patents this case concerned, and have they expired?
• Was any technical finding made about infringement, or did the case end purely on commercial terms?
• Does a venue advertising a hologram-style performance disclose whether its projection method is licensed under this or a related patent family?

Litigation over who owns a Pepper's-ghost patent is, at bottom, litigation over who can sell the illusion of a shared stage, a commercial question quite separate from whether the illusion counts as a hologram in any optical sense.