It looks like Google isn't the only company interested in smart glasses. Oakley is planning to manufacture smart glasses similar to Google's Project Glass.

Eyewear manufacturer Oakley has been working on smart glasses since 1997, which give it a 15-year head start on Google. Oakley and Google are both working on glasses that will project information directly on to the lenses. The smart glasses use a technology called augmented reality which gives users information about real life objects or places.

"As an organization, we've been chasing this beast since 1997. Ultimately, everything happens through your eyes, and the closer we can bring it to your eyes, the quicker the consumer is going to adopt the platform," said Oakley CEO Colin Baden in an interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday.

Baden said Oakley is targeting athletes for its line of smart glasses. The company is also looking to incorporate augmented reality in its military subsidiary, Eye Safety Systems. Baden didn't say when Oakley expects to release its smart glasses but that the market is "ripe" for such technology. Baden has emphasized that the glasses will be expensive on its initial release. It will take some time before glasses of this kind will be cheap enough to be main stream.

On the Google front, it looks like Google has been busy locking down the intellectual property with Project Glass. The search-engine giant has been granted three patents about the augmented reality glasses. Two of the patents are for "Multi-use eyeglasses with human I/O interface embedded" and "Ambient light display and system for displaying data." The first filing refers to a "frame, a display device, at least one sensor and a transceiver," which relays information to the frame. The second patent is about a "system for displaying data [that includes] a display unit and a transmitting unit". This patent has a drawing of a display inside a helmet which could mean that Google has more plans for its glasses beyond consumer use.