The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office has granted Visible World, a New York-based provider of targeted TV advertising systems, a patent on bandwidth management for linear household addressable TV advertising applications.
U.S. Patent No. 8,171,511, "Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation for Addressable Content," covers a method for delivering any combination of multiple commercials into the same TV ad slot, where each commercial is addressed to its own target consumer segment.
According to the USPTO, the patent was granted March 1. Visible World applied for the patent July 30, 2009. The patent is Visible World's 16th patent granted to date.
Visible World's chief rival, Invidi Technologies, has also been touting its patent portfolio -- and last year, Invidi sued Visible World and its customer Cablevision Systems, alleging infringement of a patent covering household targeting and addressing advertisements to a subscriber terminal based on household data associated with the terminal.
Visible World CEO Seth Haberman, in a prepared statement announcing the company's patent award, alluded to the lawsuit: "We think innovation is important, and we will continue to develop IP to protect ourselves as well as our deployment partners."
