Pulse Evolution's own SEC filing names Pepper's ghost, not a hologram
The company's 10-K reports the Billboard Music Awards act used what it calls a Pepper's Ghost illusion, and describes the ensuing patent dispute.
- Historical event
- May 18, 2014
- First source published
- October 10, 2014
- Site publication
- September 18, 2026
What the company's own annual report documents
Pulse Evolution Corporation's 10-K annual report, filed with the SEC on 10 October 2014, states that its predecessor produced a computer-generated and animated human likeness of the late entertainer Michael Jackson that appeared in a live performance at the Billboard Music Awards on May 18, 2014. The filing gives an audience figure as evidence of the production's reach: approximately 11 million television viewers during the initial ABC network broadcast, followed by more than 51 million online views through YouTube and Vevo. That figure is the basis the company gives for its pivot toward producing computer-generated human likeness for entertainment and other industries.
A company naming its own mechanism, for once
Unlike the press releases examined elsewhere in this archive for similar shows, this filing is unusually direct about the underlying technique. It states the industry is referred to by many as the virtual performance industry, built on a century-old projection technique the filing itself calls a Pepper's Ghost illusion. That is a securities filing, not marketing copy, and a company has more reason to be precise in a document it must stand behind to regulators. The description matches the reflection method documented in stage-projection patents such as US7883212B2: an inclined, partially reflective screen showing a virtual image built from a projected source, correct only within a defined viewing zone, not a wavefront-reconstructed hologram.
What the dispute over the method actually concerned
The same filing discloses litigation: Hologram USA, Inc., Musion Das Hologram Limited and Uwe Maass filed an amended complaint alleging that the defendants infringed the plaintiffs' patent rights by using the plaintiffs' projection illusion system to project the visual imagery the company had developed. Crucially, the filing adds that the plaintiffs have not alleged that the company's core business, the production of visual effects or human animation imagery, infringes their intellectual property rights. The claim concerned only the projection delivery method, not the digital likeness itself. That distinction, drawn by the company under legal obligation to describe the dispute accurately, separates two things coverage of these shows regularly conflates: making a digital human, and displaying it on a stage.
- Is a claimed hologram performance the same one a company's own regulatory language calls a Pepper's Ghost illusion?
- When a lawsuit is over a projection method, does that tell you anything about the quality of the underlying digital human?
- Which company controls the specific projection rig, separately from whoever built the animated likeness?
Filed under legal obligation rather than written to promote a show, this document is more forthcoming about mechanism than any press release in this batch. It names the technique, gives real audience numbers, and draws a boundary, content versus delivery, that most coverage of these performances still blurs.
Sources & reading trail
Company's own annual report naming the Billboard Music Awards performance date, audience figures, the term Pepper's Ghost illusion, and the related patent litigation.
Source published: 10 October 2014 · Retrieved: 16 September 2026
Patent documentation of the reflective-screen mechanism family the filing itself refers to as a Pepper's Ghost illusion.
Source published: 8 February 2011 · Retrieved: 16 September 2026
Primary documents establish the record; the mechanism reading and the demo questions are Presence Atlas editorial analysis. This retrospective draft does not imply the site published on the event date.
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Sources & reading trail
- Pulse Evolution Corporation Form 10-K (fiscal year 2014)
Source published: October 10, 2014 · Retrieved: September 16, 2026 - Projection apparatus and method for pepper's ghost illusion (US7883212B2)
Source published: February 8, 2011 · Retrieved: September 16, 2026
The documents above establish the record. The reading and the questions are this publication’s editorial analysis, written after the fact.
Published September 18, 2026, not on the date of the event described.