This week's granted patent digest covers 14 patents across 7 companies, with AI and machine learning leading the way at 5 patents, followed by platform (3), audio (2), and cloud gaming (2).
Sony dominated the week with 6 granted patents spanning AI-driven image generation, NPC testing, input timing, adaptive dialogue, account portability, and game discovery. Across the broader set, recurring themes included smarter AI integration into gameplay systems, spatial audio improvements, and cloud gaming infrastructure for dynamic resource management. A few patents also pushed into less common territory, with Truist Bank patenting a banking-linked RNG system for sweepstakes-style game outcomes and Adeia securing a VR safety system that auto-resizes personal space zones around users in shared physical environments.
Sony led the week with 6 granted patents, covering a wide range of game systems and AI applications. One patent describes an AI image generation system that takes live game state data as input, allowing players to modify visuals using text while the system preserves depth, occlusion, and 3D structure in the scene. Another covers an automated QA system where a designated NPC autonomously stress-tests other NPCs inside a simulated game environment, removing the need for manual testing of AI-generated characters. Sony also patented a machine learning system that predicts or delays player input commands to align them precisely with in-game moments, an adaptive dialogue system that adjusts narrative complexity based on how players respond, a "digital passport" that carries PS5 account settings like parental controls and content filters into third-party apps automatically, and a game recommendation system that introduces a randomness element to surface titles outside a player's usual preferences.
Adeia secured 2 patents this week, both addressing real-time user experience problems. The first covers a VR safety system that creates personal space zones around users, resizing those zones based on body dimensions and repositioning them as users move through a shared physical space. The second addresses cloud gaming infrastructure, describing a system that allows virtual machine resources to be upgraded mid-session in response to SLA conditions, so players can receive higher frame rates or improved graphics quality during active gameplay without interrupting the session.
Nvidia also filed 2 patents, both in the AI and machine learning space. 1 covers a pipeline that feeds video frames into a language model to generate live commentary for sports, gaming, or other events. The other describes a neural network trained to produce realistic physical forces for use in computer graphics animation, with applications in character movement and physics-based simulations.
Turtle Beach and NetEase each contributed 1 patent on the audio side. Turtle Beach patented a headset system that analyzes incoming game audio in real time, detects specific sounds, and delivers spoken voice alerts to the player through the headset itself. NetEase's patent covers spatial audio for in-game projectiles, calculating how sounds change in orientation and intensity as objects enter or leave a player's detection zone during fast movement.
InterDigital CE Patent Holdings and Truist Bank each round out the week with 1 patent. InterDigital's patent addresses video codec efficiency in cloud gaming, describing a method that allows decoders to infer transform unit partitioning decisions when block sizes fall outside supported ranges, reducing the amount of data that needs to be carried in the bitstream. Truist Bank's patent sits at an unusual intersection of banking and gaming, covering a system that uses a player's point balance to seed calls to an external random number generator, producing outcomes for sweepstakes-style game events.
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.