New patents are issued on Tuesdays by the USPTO. Today's Spotlight Patents concern aspects of digital watermarking and digital fingerprinting. Assigned to AT&T, the first of today's patents address techniques for creating and using watermarked media content in IPTV or iTV networks. Assigned to TiVo, the second patent concerns a multifunction multimedia device using digital fingerprints for content identification and presentation.
8,984,574, "Watermarked media content in IPTV or iTV networks," assigned to AT&T.
Abstract
A method that incorporates teachings of the present disclosure may embedding a watermark in media content for presentation at a rendering device using an editor to associate the watermark with one or more metadata pointers that point to additional media content according to an embedded link of the watermark to generate a group of one or more metadata pointers where the watermark includes an embedded link to additional media content used to modify the media content based on a content exchange between the rendering device and a computer. The method may further include storing the group of one or more metadata pointers, where a selection of the watermark invokes access to the altered media content containing the additional media content associated with the watermark, thereby producing the altered media content at the one or more user devices. Other embodiments are disclosed.8,984,626, "Multifunction multimedia device," assigned to TiVo.
Abstract
A method for interpreting messages, user-defined alert conditions, voice commands and performing an action in response is described. A method for annotating media content is described. A method for presenting additional content associated with media content identified based on a fingerprint is described. A method for identifying that an advertisement portion of media content is being played based on a fingerprint derived from the media content is described. A method of one media device recording particular media content automatically in response to another media device recording the particular media content is described. A method of concurrently playing media content on multiple devices is described. A method of publishing information associated with recording of media content is described. A method of deriving fingerprints by media devices that meet an idleness criteria is described. A method of loading, modifying, and displaying a high definition frame from a frame buffer is described. A method of recording or playing media content identified based on fingerprints is described.
