Patent Law Practice Center

Big Tech Turns to Biometric Innovation

Over on IPWatchdog.com, I publish what we call Companies that We Follow. The goal is to look for interesting new technologies by exploring what some of the most innovative companies in the world are working on. After a while, you see a lot of different technologies and sometimes you start to notice patterns. Analysis of biometric data has been a major area of new research among electronics manufacturers in recent years, and over the last several months we have seen quite a few biometric innovations from a variety of very large tech corporations.

One recent innovation that we saw came from Microsoft, and it related to something that you might not ordinarily associate with the giant from Redmond, Washington…namely, a mood detection device. Stress is something that everyone experiences throughout their daily life, and biometric systems for determining mood and stress levels are not new. However, reducing stress and the associated negative impacts, like chronic health conditions and poor work performance, is an important goal that could easily result in a meaningful increase in productivity in the workplace. To tackle this problem, Microsoft came up with a device that uses a microcontroller capable of processing biometric data about a person’s stress levels. The patent application filed, U.S. Patent Application No. 20140085181, claims priority to a provisional patent application filed in September 2012, which is incorporated by reference. The device described in this patent application includes a flexible material that morphs its shape to create a representation of the received biometric information. Stress information can also be output to a display that lets a person view stress and mood information and add their own personal input. This system could receive biometric data signals indicative of mood from a variety of sources, including a heart rate monitor, galvanic skin monitor, camera or microphone. For instance, a camera and image processing system could determine a change in mood based on an eyebrow shift or another facial expression. Along with changing shapes, the device can indicate a person’s mood through sounds or light display.

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