This week's digest covers 7 granted patents from 6 companies, with cloud gaming leading at 2 patents, followed by networking, AI/ML, UI/UX, VR/AR, and monetization each appearing once.
The patents span multiplayer infrastructure improvements, including Google's GPU time-sharing for concurrent streaming sessions and Niantic's parallel anticheat processing for AR games. Player experience features also feature prominently, from Sony's context-aware annotation system to Activision Blizzard's neural network-powered NPCs that replicate human behavior patterns. Cloud gaming technologies from both Google and Bright Star Gaming address streaming efficiency, while Sony explores blockchain-based item ownership and Valeo patents an in-car mixed reality system that integrates vehicle sensor data.
Google filed 1 patent covering cloud gaming infrastructure that divides GPU processing into time-shared slices, allowing multiple game sessions to run concurrently on the same hardware. The system encodes two types of video streams simultaneously, delivering low-latency feeds to active players while providing standard-latency streams for spectators watching the gameplay.
Sony secured 2 patents addressing player interaction and digital ownership. The first patent covers an annotation system that ties player-created tips and commentary to specific game states, ensuring helpful content appears at the exact moment other players need it during their own playthroughs. The second introduces a blockchain framework for decentralized item ownership, enabling players to transfer in-game assets across platforms and trade them in user-controlled markets without requiring publisher intermediaries.
Activision Blizzard patented 1 AI system that trains non-player characters using neural networks fed with data from real player behavior. The resulting bots replicate human playstyles, skill progression, and decision-making patterns in multiplayer environments, creating opponents that behave more like actual people than traditional programmed AI.
Valeo Comfort And Driving Assistance filed 1 patent for a mixed-reality gaming platform designed for vehicle passengers. The system pulls data from car sensors and surrounding environment information to generate location-aware games on mobile devices, turning the physical journey into part of the gameplay experience.
Niantic patented 1 networking approach for anticheat systems in augmented reality games that process data across parallel nodes. Each node writes its own metrics independently without waiting for the complete dataset, reducing latency in games where multiple overlapping realities exist simultaneously.
Bright Star Gaming's 1 patent describes adaptive streaming technology that starts games immediately while downloading assets progressively in the background. Players can begin playing within seconds rather than waiting for large initial downloads to complete.
All data sourced from USPTO patent filings. Google Patents may take several weeks to index recent publications. If a link is unavailable, search for the patent number at USPTO Patent Public Search.