The gaming industry has shifted from simple entertainment systems into a complex ecosystem driven by real-time rendering, artificial intelligence, cloud infrastructure, and immersive digital economies.
Over the past decade, patent filings in the gaming sector have expanded significantly, reflecting the industry’s evolution. What was once primarily focused on hardware and basic gameplay mechanics now spans mobile platforms, cloud-based gaming ecosystems, augmented reality, and AI-driven experiences. Our data shows steady growth over time followed by a recent shift toward more pending applications and fewer granted ones. This suggests a maturing pipeline and continued innovation in emerging gaming technologies.
Building on this shift, our recent analysis of Electronic Arts’ IP portfolio, which we conducted in the context of its reported acquisition by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, highlighted the role of Knobbe Martens in shaping its patent strategy within the gaming sector.
Conversations with Knobbe Martens
To explore these trends more deeply, we spoke with Dan Gibson, a partner at the firm, to discuss how rapid advances in artificial intelligence, cloud gaming, and games-as-a-service models are reshaping patent strategy across the video game industry.
Q: How has patent strategy in the gaming industry evolved over the past five to ten years?
A: From my vantage point, patent strategy in the video game industry has not significantly changed over the past five to ten years. A handful of larger publishers and studios continue to acquire patents, while most smaller studios hold few, if any, patents. Even some of the bigger studios do not have significant patent portfolios. One reason is that the industry is not overly litigious, and it remains relatively rare for gaming companies to file patent lawsuits against each other. That said, it will be interesting to see how the largest players—particularly Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo—approach this going forward. They have very significant patent portfolios, and the key question over the next several years is whether those assets will be leveraged in the marketplace.
Q: As AI and personalization technologies become more central to gameplay, how is this influencing the way companies think about protecting innovation?
It’s having a big impact across the industry. Studios are dealing with AI in every aspect of development. And within a studio you’ll see very different reactions depending on who you’re talking to. Developers may be using AI every day to code, debug, and build the game engines that make games run. But many artists, writers, and other creatives have strong reservations about using it at all. Studios also have to consider consumer perceptions of how and when AI should be used. Overall, it’s a very difficult balancing act. They need to get the productivity benefits of AI without sacrificing the artistic vision of the artists or alienating players.
With respect to protection, the focus often isn’t on the creative output itself, but rather on the systems used to create it. For example, the protection may center around the architectures and tools used to let a player create a personalized version of a character within the game.
Another issue with AI is ownership. There is still a lot of ambiguity around the ownership of AI-assisted or AI-generated materials. Studios now need to develop processes and practices that help ensure they own their ideas and games when AI is used to assist in generating content.
Q: In the context of major transactions or strategic investments, how important is a well-developed patent portfolio to overall enterprise value?
A strong patent portfolio can certainly be a valuable asset in an acquisition setting. In the gaming industry, each transaction is unique and is often based on a number of other driving factors, such as game content (e.g., released games and games in development) and user base.
Q: Are there particular technology areas within gaming (e.g., AI-driven gameplay, multiplayer systems, immersive experiences) where you’re seeing increased patent activity?
One of the bigger changes in the last decade has been the industry shift from primarily selling individual titles to a games-as-a-service model. Games are no longer released only as standalone titles, but often as living products that continue to evolve. Standalone games still exist, but many studios are focusing on fewer games with much longer lifecycles, such as Fortnite or World of Warcraft.
Over time, the patent focus has increasingly moved toward systems that support the games-as-a-service model, such as networking and multiplayer infrastructure, backend services, live-ops tooling, monetization systems like microtransactions, and other technical features that support operating and evolving a game over time.
Knobbe Martens’ role in gaming IP
Reflecting on a relatively stable patent landscape, alongside the growing importance of AI-driven systems and games-as-a-service infrastructure, we now take a closer look at Knobbe Martens’ work in patents in the gaming industry.
Knobbe Martens has built a strong reputation in high-technology patent prosecution and litigation, with capabilities that extend deeply into the gaming and interactive entertainment space. The firm works with innovators to develop and manage patent portfolios that reflect both current products and future-facing technologies.
Knobbe Martens: Patent Filings in Gaming
As of this writing, Knobbe Martens has helped companies protect their innovations and has prosecuted more than 30,000 patents since 2015. Gaming-related patent prosecution represents a relatively small share of its overall work (~1%).
Knobbe Martens: Top Clients in Gaming
In a previous Electronic Arts analysis, we identified Knobbe Martens as one of the key law firms involved in EA’s patent filings. Our data also showed Electronic Arts as the firm’s top client in the gaming sector in terms of patent activity.
We asked Dan what makes long-term collaboration between game developers and outside counsel effective in fast-moving technology sectors, given Knobbe Martens’ strong role in EA’s patent portfolio over the past decade.
Dan explains that “long-term collaboration works best when outside counsel has a deep understanding of games and a real passion for gaming.” He emphasizes that video game companies differ from typical software companies, where functionality alone often takes center stage. “Video games are a unique blend of art and technology, and the technology is always moving,” he says. Drawing parallel to movies, Dan notes that “the tech generally doesn’t determine whether the end product is good – a bad movie shot on the best cameras is still a bad movie.” He also acknowledges the role of strong execution, adding that “great technical implementation can elevate a great idea into an exceptional game.”
He further highlights that one of the keys is identifying which technologies truly enhance gameplay and storytelling, and which innovations create real business value. “One of the things I think we do very well at Knobbe Martens is to help spot those protectable innovations, get involved early, and translate them into a robust protection strategy,” Dan says, “so studios can keep making great games as the technology evolves.”
Aside from Electronic Arts, the firm also works with a range of other companies including Turtle Beach, Performance Designed Products, and Amazon Technologies, reflecting activity across both game development and supporting technologies. Additional clients such as Magic Leap and Masimo highlight the overlap between gaming, immersive systems, and adjacent technical fields.
The list also includes more specialized or emerging players such as Sports Logic, Elbo, and GumGum. Together, these clients show that Knobbe Martens’ gaming-related patent work extends beyond traditional game studios to include companies working on hardware, analytics, computer vision, and digital infrastructure that shape how games are created and experienced.
Representative gaming patent innovations
To better illustrate how technology trends translate into real-world applications, the following examples highlight representative gaming-related patents that demonstrate advances in personalization, safety, monetization, and immersive interaction.
Scaling facial animation through a universal, rules-based expression framework
U.S. Patent No. 10,860,838 introduces a rules-based, universal facial expression system that lets animators generate complex, lifelike emotions across any character by combining standardized facial shape identifiers instead of manually sculpting each expression.
Modern video game characters are expressive, but creating that realism requires modelers to manually sculpt each facial expression for every character. Each emotion and its variations must be built separately, which limits flexibility during animation. This makes the process hard to scale across characters, restricts emotional range to prebuilt expressions, and increases both memory usage and computational effort.
The system replaces manual sculpting with a universal language of facial expressions based on fundamental facial shapes, where each shape corresponds to a specific facial movement and is assigned an identifier. Animators create complex expressions by combining these identifiers with intensity values instead of building each expression from scratch. Because the system is standardized, the same combinations can be reused across different characters and automatically adapt to each character’s unique facial structure, reducing storage and computation needs while increasing expression variety and realism.
To enable this, the system captures images of an actor performing various facial movements and uses photogrammetry to build a detailed 3D face model. This model is normalized into a neutral baseline, and modelers define individual facial shapes by adjusting specific regions using reference images. Each shape represents a single movement and is stored in a database for reuse. These shapes can then be combined in additive or more complex ways to generate expressions efficiently without requiring full re-modeling.
When facial movements overlap, the system applies corrective shapes to prevent distortion and ensure realistic results based on how facial features interact in real life. It can also extend facial shape definitions to new or less detailed characters by mapping them to similar existing models or using limited capture data. In production, animators can directly apply or reverse-engineer expressions through an interface, and the system generates results in real time using stored building blocks, enabling scalable and consistent facial animation across all characters.
The patent, titled “Universal facial expression translation and character rendering system”, was filed on January 16, 2018, and was granted on December 8, 2020 to Electronic Arts. Dwayne Lance Elahie and Benjamin Andrew L Wronsky were listed as inventors. Daniel Gibson represented Electronic Arts in the filing.
Machine learning turns real people into lifelike in-game avatars
U.S. Patent No. 10,953,334 uses machine learning to automatically create a realistic virtual character from video or images of a real person, capturing both how they look and how they move to enable highly personalized in-game avatars.
Modern video games let players customize their characters, but the options are still limited. Most systems rely on preset models and simple edits like changing clothes or colors, which makes it hard to create avatars that truly look like real people. At the same time, character movement is usually generic and not based on how a real person actually behaves. More advanced methods like motion capture can improve realism, but they are expensive and not practical for most users. As a result, current systems struggle to deliver avatars that feel both personal and lifelike.
The disclosed technology addresses these by using two machine learning models that work together to automate avatar creation. The system starts with a basic 3D human model and takes in input media such as a video of a real person. One model analyzes visual features to adjust the base model and generate a customized 3D appearance, while another model examines how the person moves to create a behavior model that captures actions, posture, and motion patterns. These outputs are then combined into a single virtual character that both looks like and behaves like the real person within a game environment.
The system can also detect clothing from the input media and recreate it digitally, even suggesting similar items from a catalog to enhance realism. Once created, the avatar can be stored and reused across different games, making it more flexible and scalable. Over time, the system can improve accuracy by incorporating user feedback to better match the avatar’s behavior with the real person. By automating both appearance and behavior generation from standard video input, the technology enables highly personalized and lifelike avatars without the need for manual design or specialized motion capture systems.
The patent, titled “Virtual character generation from image or video data”, was filed on March 27, 2019, and was granted on March 23, 2021 to Electronic Arts. The patent listed John Kolen, Harold Henry Chaput, Navid Aghdaie, Kazi Atif-Uz Zaman, and Kenneth Alan Moss as inventors. Andrew Lloyd represented Electronic Arts in the filing.
“Wolverine” exoskeleton enables lifelike object manipulation in virtual reality
U.S. Patent No. 10,248,201 describes a lightweight, wearable haptic device that enables users to physically feel and grasp virtual objects by generating controlled force feedback between the thumb and fingers.
An ideal consumer VR haptic device should be lightweight, low-cost, ungrounded, and capable of delivering strong, precise, and high-frequency force feedback. Existing solutions fail to meet all these criteria simultaneously. Grounded systems limit workspace, while wearable gloves often compromise on comfort, realism, or portability. Many also struggle to accurately simulate precision grips between the thumb and fingers, which are critical for natural object manipulation.
The “Wolverine” device addresses these limitations by using a compact, ungrounded, and wearable design that delivers force feedback directly between the thumb and fingertips. Instead of relying on heavy active actuators, it uses a brake-based mechanism that passively resists motion when needed. This allows the device to simulate rigid object interactions with high force output while remaining lightweight, energy-efficient, and suitable for consumer use.
The Wolverine is built as an exoskeleton worn on the thumb and fingers. A base unit is mounted on the thumb, which serves as the central anchor point. Extending from this base are one or more rigid rods (commonly three), each connected to a fingertip via a sliding mount.
Each rod–finger connection includes a controllable brake mechanism that allows the system to switch between free movement and resistance. In the default state, sliding mounts move freely along the rods, enabling natural hand motion. When a virtual object is grasped, small DC motors activate the brakes, locking the mounts in place along the rods and forming a rigid linkage between the thumb and fingers, which resists further movement and creates the sensation of holding a solid object.
The design uses multiple joint types to maintain flexibility and control, including ball joints (3 degrees of freedom) at the thumb base, cylindrical joints (2 degrees of freedom) for sliding motion along the rods, and revolute joints (1 degree of freedom) at the fingertips, allowing smooth movement when unengaged and firm resistance when activated. The braking system is energy-efficient because the motors only initiate locking, while the user’s own grip force maintains it, reducing power use, and embedded sensors track finger position and orientation to synchronize with the virtual environment, enabling realistic and responsive grasping without the bulk of traditional haptic devices.The patent, titled “Wolverine: a wearable haptic interface for grasping in virtual reality”, was filed on May 5, 2017, and was granted on April 2, 2019 to Stanford University. The patent listed Elliot W. Hawkes, Inrak Choi, and Sean Follmer as inventors. V. Lakshmanan represented the patent filing.
OUR FEATURED GUEST
DANIEL GIBSON
Partner, Knobbe Martens
Dan Gibson is a partner at intellectual property and technology law firm Knobbe Martens. A former engineer, he provides IP counseling related to various technologies, including video games, generative AI, computer software and hardware, augmented and virtual reality, computer graphics processing, cloud computing architectures, e-commerce, robotics, and electromechanical technologies.
He advises on patent prosecution and portfolio management, infringement and invalidity analyses, patent risk management, and IP due diligence and searches.