Sony Patents: From Internet Television to Athletic Performance

The Sony Corporation (NYSE: SNE) of Tokyo, Japan, is a major company involved in electronics engineering for an incredible array of consumer products, from video games to financial services. Sony restructuring efforts under CEO Kazuo Hirai will focus heavily on the development of the company’s movie entertainment division; Hirai recently announced that Sony expects those revenues to increase by more than a third over the next three years. Sony’s music production subsidiary, Sony Music Entertainment, has recently criticized the free music streaming services offered by Spotify and other Internet services. Sony is also developing a cloud-based television system, known as the PlayStation Vue, which could offer about 75 channels of television content to users of the PlayStation 3 or PlayStation 4 for $60 per month.

Once again, the Companies We Follow series has Sony squarely in our sights and we’ve found some great patent applications filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. A couple of these technologies are related to mobile phone use, including a microphone device wearable in a speaker’s ear which does a better job of blocking out distracting noise. Another patent application discusses a program guide for accessing Internet video through a television set. We were also piqued by an innovative way to locate a vehicle lost within a huge parking lot using a mobile electronic device.

Internet-enabled television services were also at the heart of some the patents we wanted to share with our readers, including one protecting a method of sharing live streaming content with consumers over the Internet. A few other patents we discuss below protect novel systems for video games, including one gesture-based system which could be incorporated into first-person shooter games. We also explore a patent protecting a method of analyzing athletic performance from a series of photos.

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Sony’s Patent Applications: Smartphones, Flat Panel Displays and a Vehicle Locator 

As one of the world’s major manufacturers of consumer electronics, Sony influences a great deal of development in electronics all over the world. Sony’s corporate research and development activities include a great focus on sustainability in electronic products; Sony has released many eco-conscious products recently, from smartphones to digital cameras to laptops. There are some industry critics who have argued that Sony’s recent corporate troubles, which include five net losses over the past six years, are due in large part to the company’s inability to invest properly in innovation over the past few years. Still, Sony is developing some intriguing electronics products outside of its incredibly popular PlayStation series of consoles. For example, the company just announced the development of a camera sensor for smartphones and tablets which can capture 4K video, which is a huge improvement over 1080p high definition video.

From U.S. Patent Application No. 20140321688, which is titled “Earhole-Wearable Sound Collection Device, Signal Processing Device.”

Sony controls a fairly small share of the smartphone market compared to other manufacturers like Apple and Samsung, but we noticed a few intriguing patent applications filed for technologies in this field. An earpiece device with enhanced characteristics for blocking out noise is discussed within U.S. Patent Application No. 20140321688, which is titled Earhole-Wearable Sound Collection Device, Signal Processing Device, and Sound Collection Method. The patent application would protect an earhole-wearable sound collection device which includes an internal microphone to collect the speaking voice of a wearer. The audio signal is filtered by a low-frequency extraction filter unit and then processed by an equalizing unit. This technology is intended to support high signal-to-noise ratios in external microphones used in conjunction with smartphones for verbal communication. Sony already has a great deal of R&D invested in video gaming through its successful PlayStation product line and it may be trying to leverage some of that technology for mobile platforms with the filing of U.S. Patent Application No. 20140309038, filed under the title Mobile Phone Game Interface. The system that would be protected by this patent application selects a controller application for a mobile station that controls a video game console through inputs made by the user of a mobile station. This invention essentially folds the functions of a video game console controller into a mobile device, allowing a user to play a game through a console using their smartphone or tablet. This patent application was filed by Sony subsidiary Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. of San Mateo, CA, the Sony subsidiary responsible for development of the PlayStation console series.

From U.S. Patent Application No. 20140310747, filed under the title “Expanded Playlist for TV Video Player.”

Aside from video game consoles and computing products, Sony’s consumer electronics products also include televisions using flat panel displays. We found an interesting innovation in this field that would be protected by U.S. Patent Application No. 20140332784, titled Organic Light Emitting Device, Display Unit, and Device Comprising a Display Unit. The patent application would protect an organic light emitting device with a laminated structure anode with multiple anode layers, one of which includes a reflective layer. This device would enable the use of dry etching techniques with silver layers used in light emitting device electrodes, which offers superior performance characteristics and service life over wet etching techniques. Anyone using a Sony television utilizing this flat screen panel might also benefit from the system laid out within U.S. Patent Application No. 20140310747, filed under the title Expanded Playlist for TV Video Player. Filed jointly by Sony Corporation and Sony Electronics Inc., this patent application would protect a processor system for executing instructions that output a video guide onto a video display. The video guide contains various graphic entities which are selectable and are associated with video assets found on the Internet. This innovation is intended to present additional Internet-based features and functions to television users in a way which doesn’t add clutter to a user interface.

We were intrigued to note a couple of Sony innovations related to systems designed to observe or monitor molecular structures for manufacturing or other activities. Improvements to methods of inspecting semiconductor materials during manufacturing processes are the focus of U.S. Patent Application No. 20140332687, which is titled Optical System, Terahertz Emission Microscope, and Method of Manufacturing a Device. This patent application protects an optical system with an extracting section which is optically coupled to an observed object in such a way that it extracts a terahertz electromagnetic wave generated from the observed object. This system is capable of determining the presence of defective wiring in a semiconductor using contactless methods. Other systems for detecting important characteristics of incredibly small samples are discussed within U.S. Patent Application No. 20140329336, titled Chemical Sensor, Chemical Sensor Module, Chemical Substance Detection Apparatus, and Chemical Substance Detection Method. The chemical sensor that would be protected by this patent application has a substrate which contains a photodetection unit as well as a plasmon absorption layer with a metal nanostructure. This invention is intended to improve the performance of chemical sensor systems for observing DNA, RNA and other substances by providing excellent spectral filtering characteristics for blocking out interfering light.

We also wanted to share a technology created by Sony that may help them find their car more quickly in a huge parking light at sports stadiums or other venues. U.S. Patent Application No. 20140343834, which is titled Method and Apparatus for Finding a Lost Vehicle, would protect an apparatus that is accessible by a client device and executes logic to establish communication between the client device and a vehicle and providing a map or directional instructions to the client device that will help a user locate a lost vehicle. This technology is intended to leverage the ubiquity of personal electronic devices, including smartphones and tablets, by providing a system for locating a lost vehicle which does not require the use of an additional special purpose beacon locator on a separate device which users would have to remember to bring with them.

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Issued Patents of Note: From Internet Television Services to Athletic Performance Analysis

Even with the criticisms of Sony’s recent innovation practices that have been levied by industry commentators, which we addressed above, there can be no doubt that Sony has an incredibly strong portfolio of intellectual properties when compared to any other entity on earth. Throughout 2013, Sony was awarded a total of 3,316 patents by the USPTO, 4th-most among any corporation seeking U.S. patent grants during that year; it should be noted that this did represent a decrease of just over 8 percent when compared to the amount of U.S. patent grants issued to the company in 2012. By the measure of some reputable mainstream publications, including USA Today, Sony has one of the world’s strongest patent portfolios.

From U.S. Patent No. 8888593, which is titled “Directional Input for a Video Game.”

Video games have been a very successful area of research and development for the Sony Corporation, which we recently profiled in our Brief History of the PlayStation. We found another couple of patents in this field that were recently assigned to the company which we felt may pique the interests of our readers. U.S. Patent No. 8888592, issued under the title Voice Overlay, claims a system which generates audio data for a game state of a video game and processes that audio data through an encoding pipeline that provides audio overlay logic. This system is designed to overlay a player’s voice onto an audio stream generated by a video game to communicate with players on remote consoles. Other methods of improving the interaction between individuals and video game systems are disclosed and protected by U.S. Patent No. 8888593, which is titled Directional Input for a Video Game. It protects a method of providing directional input that utilizes a capture to capture images of objects and performing both three- and two-dimensional analysis of the image data to determine a directional input for a video game. This system could be used to introduce a system of gesture control for video games using the PlayStation video game console developed by Sony.

This company also received some interesting patents related to television services which have been developed through Sony’s R&D activities. Improved methods of sharing live streaming content to home entertainment devices through the Internet are protected by U.S. Patent No. 8892870, which is titled Digital Rights Management for Live Streaming Based on Trusted Relationships. The patent claims a method of managing the digital rights of contents by transmitting an affiliation token to a client device using a trusted agent. The affiliation token is used to determine whether a client device has the right to request a decryption key for the playback of live streaming content. The system enables better protections for content providers which are transmitting live streaming content to IP-enabled television sets, computers or other devices which can connect to the Internet. The user experience for Internet-enabled televisions may also be enhanced by U.S. Patent No. 8886009, titled Creation of Video Bookmarks via Scripted Interactivity in Advanced Digital Television. The patent protects a method of creating an interactive bookmark on an information processing apparatus which involves the execution of a downloadable triggered declarative object (TDO) that initiates a request to create a bookmark. This innovation is intended to provide Internet-enabled television users with an interactive platform to create video bookmarks for television content.

From U.S. Patent No. 8885979, entitled “Apparatus and Associated Methodology for Analyzing Subject Motion in Images.”

We briefly discussed Sony’s recent R&D focus on creating more eco-conscious devices and we found a related patent which we felt was worth sharing with our readers. U.S. Patent No. 8890965, entitled System and Method for Efficiently Transferring Data from an Electronic Camera Device, claims a system of transferring data using an imaging device that contains a transfer manager for completion of data transfer procedures. The technology was developed to provide a method of sharing data from electronic devices in a resource-efficient way that responds to the growing complexity of the data captured by electronic devices. We’ll wrap up today’s analysis with a look at another image processing system which is the focus of U.S. Patent No. 8885979, entitled Apparatus and Associated Methodology for Analyzing Subject Motion in Images. The image processing apparatus protected by this patent collects frame image data of a moving person and a moving object and analyzing image data of the moving person to find if it meets predetermined conditions. The system is intended to be used by athletes who are seeking form confirmation when playing sports activities such as golf, football or soccer.

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