Sony Patent would have you yell at your TV to skip commercials

Imagine being trapped in commercial hell where your voice is the only escape. Who cooks such a thing?

According to a tweet (opens in new tab) that has been viewed over 18 million times, this was Sony’s brilliant idea. I almost did a spit-take when the tweet rolled into my feed. It’s not a full patent, but an illustration of someone sitting on a couch watching a TV show where a person shoots someone else (weird to have so much unnecessary violence in a patent). A McDonald’s commercial, represented of course by a giant hamburger, appears on screen with the message, “Say ‘McDonald’s’ to end the commercial.” The TV viewer enthusiastically jumps to his feet and yells “McDonald’s” and then it’s back to the violence on screen.

Which is doing look like someone ending a commercial with their voice. But that’s not the whole story.

The total lack of context surrounding the tweet and the patent drawing intrigued me. Where does this image come from? After reviewing hundreds of patents over the years, I was convinced that this was, in fact, a real patent drawing (not that someone hadn’t intentionally drawn something to mimic one).

I decided to investigate whether this was from a genuine patent. That’s not so easy. According to my friends at the US Patent and Trademark Office, there are more than 11.5 million patents (not counting the patents that were lost in a fire in 1836).

The US Patent Office has a search engine (opens in new tab), but it doesn’t always make it easy to find what you need. I tried searching “Sony” and “Commercials” but couldn’t find anything similar to this patent or image.

I switched to Google and searched “sony and commercials brand name”. The first result was for the popular tweet. Thanks, Google.

However, when I scrolled down I saw articles from 2014 and 2013 (opens in new tab). They all emphasized the same image and offered the same lack of context. on Reddit, a post dedicated to the image (opens in new tab) was removed by moderators for having “no evidence/source”. No one seemed to know where to find the original patent.

Turns out there’s evidence and a source, though, and I found it in Google Patents. The oft-shared image is just one of 21 illustrations out Patent No. US8246454B2 (opens in new tab)“System for converting television commercials into interactive network video games”, by inventor Gary M Zalewiski.

Sony already applied for the patent in 2009. The application was granted in August 2021.

The patent isn’t ostensibly about trapping consumers in commercial hell until they jump up and yell a brand name. Here’s part of the summary:

“In one method, a broadcast or streamed commercial is accompanied by an interactive segment. A media player linked to the broadcast or streaming media source identifies the existence of the interactive segment and presents the user with an enhanced and interactive minigame commercial that can be played with other “viewers” in a common or dispersed demographic.”

Based on the description and images, this patent is about interactive and action-oriented commercials. You could play games in it or even order products. In one illustration, the system shows a TV connected to both a “Media Streaming Computer” and PlayStation (it looked like a PS3). The game console connects to an interactive commercial service, which then talks to an advertiser or one of nearly a dozen networks at the back end, including NBC, CBS, Hulu, and, yes, MySpace.

Each parent illustration or “Figure” as they are referred to in patents comes with a small caption. This is how the key image is described.

“FIG. 9 illustrates a user verbally interacting with a commercial, according to one embodiment.”

I know, not much going on.

However, the more detailed description of the patent makes it clear exactly what’s happening in that illustration, and it’s even weirder than I thought.

I won’t put the whole description here because it’s too long and clearly written by someone who isn’t interested in elegant prose. Instead, I’ll list the steps:

• Someone is watching a movie
• The progress bar of the movie shows that a commercial break is coming up (which is something you can see today on services like Hulu).
• The commercial begins
• It is interactive and activates the on-screen display of “Say McDonald’s to end commercial”
• The viewer says, “McDonald’s (we’ll never know why he chose to jump up and raise his arms).
• The viewer’s words are picked up by a microphone on the TV
• Speech recognition readers the answer
• The system skips the rest of the commercial
• The viewer resumes watching the show
• The viewer may receive a reward or coupon from the commercial sponsor: McDonald’s, for example

The only wrinkle here is that this isn’t so much about catching someone in a never-ending loop of commercials as it is about triggering user engagement with the square root of a possible reward. I mean, I’d like to say “Subway!” or “Cialis!” to end a commercial faster.

And that’s the key. This was never an invention intended to create a Morbius commercial strip that you could only leave if you spoke out. It was partly an interactive incentive system, perhaps the first ever in the history of live TV broadcasting.

I sent inquiries to both Sony and the inventor to learn more about the status of this patent. If I hear anything, I’ll update this story.

It’s always fun to post, share, and laugh at these self-contained images, but it’s just as important to remember that they rarely, if ever, tell the whole story. To me, the patent is now much more interesting, maybe even a little weirder.

I really can’t wait for us all to shout at our best TV of 2023 with real purpose.