Our foundation
A granted patent family, first filed in 2017.
Paymium™ is built on the architecture of US 10,129,594 B2 and its Canadian and European counterparts. The patents are owned by Amplivy, Inc.; Paymium is an Amplivy company.
What was invented
In March 2017, Rodric David, Matthew Price and Paul Kolesa filed a patent application for a content-aware controller that sits at the display. It recognizes what is happening on screen — for example, the moment a program gives way to a commercial — and acts on it, under instructions from a central server, without needing to modify or cooperate with the incoming broadcast feed.
Granted patents
| United States | US 10,129,594 B2 — Content-Activated Intelligent, Autonomous Audio/Video Source Controller. Filed and priority 21 March 2017; granted 13 November 2018. |
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| Canada | CA 3,057,449 — granted 21 July 2026. |
| Europe | EP 3,603,077 B1 — granted 19 January 2022; validated in Germany, France, Italy and Spain (ES 2,911,179 T3). |
What the granted claims protect
The independent claims of the U.S. patent cover a system and method in which a switching device at the display, acting on instructions from a control server, detects the transition from a television program to a commercial and switches the display to a different commercial — together with the other elements the claims recite. Dependent claims add, among other things, notifying a connected mobile device when that switch happens, and showing related content on it. The Canadian and European claims follow the same structure, each in its own words.
What the patent also describes
The specification describes a broader architecture at the display, including:
- Central control of many devices across a venue and beyond.
- Resizing and composing the picture — for example filling letterbox space or showing picture-in-picture — while programming continues.
- Commanding display functions such as power, input, volume and mute, captions and aspect ratio.
- Delivering audio, information and offers to phones, tablets and computers nearby.
What a patent describes is broader than what its claims protect. The granted claims define the legal protection; not every function described here, and not every Paymium feature, is individually patented.
Pending applications
Further patent applications are pending in the United States and other jurisdictions.
Ownership
The patents listed on this page are owned by Amplivy, Inc. PAYMIUM™ and Amplivy™ are trademarks of Amplivy, Inc.
Patent notice
This page gives notice under 35 U.S.C. § 287(a) of the patents that cover technology Paymium is built on: US 10,129,594 B2. It is updated as patents issue.
Licensing enquiries for the underlying technology: contact Amplivy.