Sony sells 43 VR patents to Meta in deal covering hundreds more
Sony has sold 43 virtual-reality patents to Meta under an agreement signed in December 2025. United States records show the 43 properties changed hands between June and September 2026, as reported on 8 October 2026 Video Games Chronicle.
The catalogue is large. The agreement will eventually cover more than 400 global patents, comprising 180 based in the US and a further 239 filed in Japan, China, Korea, Europe and other regions.
The patents centre on XR headsets, the umbrella term for hardware that covers virtual reality and augmented reality. The transfer was first identified in US filings Road to VR, with the batch described elsewhere as AR/VR hardware-related patents Shacknews.
Patents are legal rights over how inventions work. A sale of this kind passes ownership of those rights to the buyer, which can then use the designs or block others from using them without permission.
The deal concerns Sony’s headset work around PlayStation VR2. That headset, for use with the PlayStation 5, was released on 22 February 2023 at US$549.99 / £529.99, including the headset, Sense controllers and stereo headphones.
Sony published only two original games for the device, Horizon: Call of the Mountain and Firewall Ultra. In 2024, the headset gained PC support, which required a separate PC adapter to function, and the standard headset received a price cut of more than 30%.
For owners, the context is familiar. PlayStation VR2 arrived at a premium price and received a limited run of first-party releases before Sony widened its use beyond the console.
