Intel Gets US Patent For Cognovision’s Video Analytics IP

July 3, 2014 by Dave Haynes

This could be interesting.

The US Patent Office has just granted Intel patent #8,766,914, which covers video analytics for digital signage.

The patent summary is for a “Method and apparatus for measuring audience size for a digital sign”

The abstract says:

Measuring audience size for a digital sign comprises generating a plurality of paths, one for each face detected in a first sequence of video frames captured by a camera proximate the digital sign, and generating a zone in the sequence of video frames through which passes a threshold number of the paths. Motion and direction of motion within the zone is then measured in a second sequence of video frames to calculate the audience size that passes through the zone in the second sequence of video frames.

This is the intellectual property that Intel acquired when it bought Cognovision a few years ago, and the inventors listed are all (I think) Cognovision guys, save for Intel’s Bill Colson.

The irony here is that Intel may hold the IP, but it really doesn’t develop code for the “method and apparatus” anymore, having all but shut down the Intel AIM product in January 2014, months after it shifted the offices from Toronto to Phoenix (prompting almost the entire AIM crew to get packaged out).

So you have a very large company that probably has a very large patent litigation team with a patent on legitimate technology that was actively in the field, but isn’t anymore. What if anything will Intel have to say about the many companies out there that have video analytics audience measurement in their platform offer?

Quividi, presumably the market leader in this tech, has its own patents on Automated Media Content Adaptation and Delivery.