Epic Games sues smart glasses manufacturer Nreal for sounding too much like Unreal

Another day, another lawsuit for Epic Games to sassily throw in the lap of someone else. Epic Games is suing Chinese company Nreal, who develop augmented reality eyewear, over the use of the world “Nreal”. The fancy eyewear brand teased that it was gearing up for a major push into markets outside of South Korea and China, and that was more than enough for Epic to take the bull by the horns and wrassle it into court. Truthfully, the two companies have been battling over the use of the Nreal name for years now; it’s just that the supposedly Western expansion is what Epic Games really didn’t enjoy as the company has accused Nreal of using the very similar name deliberately.

Nreal doesn’t actually have much to do with Epic Games. They act as a set of smart glasses that can be paired to an phone and then overlays what I assume to be specially designed apps onto your environment. They’re AR glasses, able to project Pokemon into the world around you without needing to look through a phone to see them. Epic Games has no such device in it’s current catalogue, but it does have the Unreal Engine. “Nreal” and “Unreal” do sound quite familiar but the problem lies within the fact that many apps compatible with Nreal’s headset run on Unreal tech. According to Eurogamer, Epic has stated that it wants to leverage the Unreal Engine when establishing its very own “virtual metaverse”. Whatever that means.

This lawsuit comes at the same time Epic Games and Apple are currently battling in court regarding Fortnite on the App Store. Epic Games was unsatisfied with the 30% cut Apple took of all transactions made in the App Store and thus, took it to court. Of course, now we’re in a strange situation as lawyers try and convince the world that Roblox isn’t a game but rather an app “experience” and is thus exempt from the 30% cut owed to Apple. It’s weird, man.

Last Updated: May 18, 2021