Rearden Press

Steve Perlman's two decades of innovation in Silicon Valley don't boil down easily to one or two high points. Maybe the best known moment was the 1997 sale of WebTV, which he co-founded, to Microsoft for an estimated $500 million. But how does that rank compared to his work as a principal scientist at Apple, where he led the development efforts for technology that went into QuickTime and the color Macintosh. Perlman holds more than 70 patents, and Rearden, the technology incubator he founded in 2000, has been the launching pad for an array of multimedia products and services.

The Mercury News' Mike Antonucci caught up with Perlman, 46, over breakfast last week. His first questions were about Mova, a company Perlman founded in 2004, and its Contour Reality Capture system. Both the questions and answers were edited for space.

Q
Bring us up to date on Mova and Contour and tell us what it is you're trying to accomplish.
A
Mova is a motion-capture company, and we've developed a technology called Contour Reality Capture that allows you to capture the motion of any surface with a high degree of precision. In particular, what we're capturing the motion of is faces, because that's been a real thorny problem for both video games and motion pictures and increasingly for online avatars. The human brain is wired from birth to not only recognize human faces but also detect any slight imperfection. So if you don't get it exactly right, the brain goes and sees the defect as far more significant than actually the defect is in terms of the graphical representation. So we knew we had to get it spot on. . . . Basically, the way Contour works is we sponge on some phosphorescent makeup, the same kind of stuff you use for Halloween, and then we have these lights that flash on and off so fast that it's above the threshold of perception, so your brain doesn't see them flashing -- (it) looks like the lights are on all the time. And then we have cameras synchronized to the lights, which open their shutters when the lights are off. What do they see? The glow from the phosphor. And because the phosphor is sponged on, it's in a random pattern, so one camera will see, say, a pattern on your cheek, and then another camera will scan, find the exact same pattern, they triangulate and that's how they find out where in 3-D space your cheek is at that particular moment.

Q
Are you succeeding?
A
It was introduced just over a year ago, and we are doing feature films, video games -- we're doing work on military projects, believe it or not -- and we are also integrating into game systems in particular. The big thing we just showed in San Francisco two weeks ago was Contour running live on a video-game system, so you're seeing a face that was almost a perfect human face, but it was completely under control of the game system, so what you're seeing there is a preview of what games will look like. They will be indistinguishable from live action.

Q
What's the state of innovation in the valley? Is this really still the capital, heart and center of technological innovation?
A
There's no question in my mind that this is the heart and center of technological innovation in the world right now. There are more business-model-based companies than there have been in the past, as a percentage of the overall companies. There's kind of, if you will, less technology creativity (and) more about how to use technology in a clever way to create a new business model. But what you don't hear as much about, but is still alive and well, is the . . . brilliant invention that goes on here. And there are some incredible, creative people . . . and they will absolutely change all of our assumptions about what we currently think is the way that things should be done.

Q
Could you single out an area of technology or an innovative focus that's next going to change everyone's daily life?
A
Wow, there's just too many. We're seeing some very exciting innovation in wireless communications, in optics, as far as lens systems in particular, and also sensors. Some brilliant stuff there. We're seeing some terrific work with various technologies for network distribution and so forth. Some of it is incremental but in order to make it work (it) required some very, very clever invention. Like there are companies doing some stuff that's going to dramatically increase the speed of DSL connections, dramatically increase the speed of cable modem connections and wireless stuff. So then, when you go to these higher bandwidth connections, then you see other guys who are doing great stuff that you would never dream of doing unless you knew that you were going to have high-speed broadband connection, so one thing feeds on the other. Terrific work is being done with biology, particularly biology connected with technology. I was literally speaking with some folks last week who may have developed a cure for the common cold. I know it sounds crazy, but I kid you not. It might actually work.

Q
You've emerged as one of the prominent voices about patent reform. What's your objection and concern about the current (proposed) patent reform legislation?
A
The current patent reform legislation strongly favors large high-tech companies over just about everyone else. But most notably . . . it's very disadvantageous for entrepreneurs and for small inventors. . . . In a nutshell, basically, the bill weakens patents across the board. The presumption is that, OK, we've got patent trolls, and we need to go and stop these guys from asserting weak patents against companies (to) gum up the works. In any ecosystem, there's always going to be parasites, and I consider patent trolls to be parasites. . . . But that doesn't mean you destroy the whole ecosystem to deal with parasites. . . . So the problem with the patent reform act, it just says, OK, we have a few bad actors, let's go and penalize everybody using patents, which is absurd. . . . What you need to do is find out what's not working and address those issues specifically.