In what proved a busy day on the nominations front, President Joe Biden Tuesday (Oct. 26) signaled he is nominating Kathi Vidal to head the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) as undersecretary for intellectual property.

USPTO is currently headed by acting director Drew Hirshfeld.

Among other things, the Patent Office advises the president and top administration officials on IP policy, protection and enforcement.

The explosion of online video has made protecting that content from the potential, and reality, of widespread digital piracy an important issue for streamers.

Vidal has been managing partner at Winston & Strawn‘s Silicon Valley office, where she has represented both sides in high-profile patent disputes, including in front of the USPTO.

She has also been an advisor to standard-setting bodies on IP policies. She is also on the advisory board of CHIPS, a nonprofit advancing women “at the intersection of” law, tech and regulatory policy.

Her experience includes having been a lawyer for General Electric and Lockheed Martin and she has bachelor‘s and master‘s degrees in electrical engineering.

“The Motion Picture Association applauds President Biden’s nomination of Kathi Vidal to serve as the next Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)," said Motion Picture Association chairman Charles Rivkin. “We look forward to continuing to work with the USPTO to ensure the continued success of the creative community and the strength of America’s copyright, trademark, and patent systems."

He pointed out just how important protecting his members' content is.

“The core copyright industries — including the film, television, and streaming industry — employ more than 5.7 million Americans who earn on average more than $107,000 annually," he said in praising the nomination. "In 2019 our industries in total added $2.5 trillion to the U.S. GDP and accounted for 12% of the economy. We brought back $219 billion in foreign sales — more than the American agricultural, pharmaceutical, aerospace, and electronics industries. Intellectual property fuels the world’s most successful creative community, and we look forward to Ms. Vidal’s confirmation to lead this critical agency.”

Cablevision Systems has landed a U.S. patent that covers audience measurement and analytics at the set-top box level.

The patent – U.S. No.  9,071,370 – is titled “System and Method for Set Top Box Viewing Data” and covers “critical aspects” of the cable operator’s system for capturing, synthesizing, and running analytics against viewing data. Leveraging granular data in a secure, anonymized and privacy compliant manner supports Cablevision Media Sales clients as they seek to optimize media campaigns and provide actionable results, the MSO noted.

Cablevision filed for the patent on Aug. 3, 2010. It was granted on June 30, 2015.

“Cablevision is firmly committed to addressing clients’ need to reach audiences across multiple platforms with data-driven and measureable solutions,” Ben Tatta, president of Cablevision Media Sales, said in a statement. “This new patent further demonstrates our commitment to developing census-based measurement and analytics that serve the needs of programmers and advertisers. It is a result of more than five years of commitment to census-level measurement and provides the foundation to work towards scaling these capabilities as the industry eyes broader deployment.”

For more about Cablevision’s use of and strategy behind census- and impression-based viewing measurement, please see this recent Q&A (subscription required) with Tatta.

aioTV, a Denver-based maker of video software and HDMI “pass-through” boxes, said it has scored a patent for metadata normalization and video playback, elements that can help MVPDs and other providers offer a blend of linear, on-demand and OTT video.

The patent (U.S. No. 9,027,065) describes a “Method and system for creating video channels for delivery of content from multiple platforms,” was filed on March 18, 2014, and issued on May 5, 2015. 

“The system includes a package generation module by which a service provider may define a package of both traditional and OTT channels to offer to subscribers in a unified programming interface,” the patent filing notes. “When a user uses the interface to select a set of video channels, the system compiles the set of the video channels in a subscriber package of both television and OTT channels.”

According to Mike Earle, aioTV’s CEO, MVPDs are struggling with the massive amount of metadata coming at them from an increasing number of sources.

“This patent and the associated methods in our metadata normalization engine are key to solving an industry wide problem that has immediate attention on it all the way to the C suites in these companies,” he said.

Last fall, aioTV and Midcontinent Communications  announced they were working on a “strategic project” that will enable the MSO to pair traditional live TV services with a new UI that will also support over-the-top video applications and services. Under that plan, Midcontinent will link legacy,  QAM-only set-tops (many from U.K.-based supplier Pace plc) to aioTV’s Android-powered, IP-connected “PassBox” via an HDMI cable. 

Rentrak has received patents for its method of calculating exact commercial ratings and it means to generating ratings when the return path data is incomplete.

The Nielsen research competitor says the U.S. patents afford it and its clients an advantage when it comes to gauging the new ways television programs are consumed.

“Once again, the U.S. Patent Office has recognized Rentrak’s unique inventions that help it measure TV everywhere,” said Rentrak vice chairman and CEO Bill Livek.

U.S. Patent 8,887,188 is for a method that secures Rentrak’s intellectual property rights around “Exact Commercial Ratings.”  Rentrak provides, to the second, the rating for national commercials to give advertisers precise accountability. That differs than Nielsen's average of commercials in a pod, according to the company.

The government awarded Rentrak U.S. Patent 8,893,165 for its method and system that compensates for problems with return path TV data storage. In some cases, a return path TV is unable to store all the channel changes before sending them back for processing by Rentrak. This patent detects when this problem occurs, enabling Rentrak to fix the problem quickly.