Company patents
SONY CORPORATION
SONY CORPORATION's patent strategy reveals a surprising and broad decline across nearly all its top categories, with significant year-over-year drops in key areas like Pictorial / Video Communications (-82.4% so far in 2026), Wireless Networks (-80.0% so far in 2026), and Image Processing (-100.0% so far in 2026), suggesting a major shift away from traditional communication and computing hardware innovation. Despite this overall contraction, the company showed a brief emerging focus in Speech Processing and Manipulators & Robotics in 2024, with YoY growth of +15.0% and +27.8% respectively, although these also saw sharp declines in 2025 and 2026.
Patent Trend by Technology Area
Yearly patent publications since 2023
Product themes
Product-level themes inferred from filings since 2023, with category chips showing where each theme appears. Select a theme to filter the patents below.
1,036 US filings (since 2023) · 12 categories · 42 themes
Methods and apparatus for improving the visual fidelity, resolution, or compression efficiency of video signals, often through advanced processing, up-scaling, or neural network-based filters.
Techniques and hardware architectures for optimizing the radio frequency (RF) front-end, antenna systems, and beamforming strategies in wireless networks to improve signal quality, capacity, and interference mitigation.
Methods and systems for improving the quality of video streams, generating intermediate frames, or continuously locating and following objects within a sequence of images, even under occlusion.
Techniques for rendering, interacting with, and managing content within augmented or virtual reality environments, including spatial tracking, gaze interaction, and dynamic multi-application display management.
Layout, material composition, and structural arrangement of photoelectric conversion elements and associated circuitry within image sensor arrays, including infrared detectors and back-side illuminated structures.
Designing user interfaces and interaction methods specifically for mobile or wearable devices, enabling control of external systems, monitoring user states, or facilitating real-world transactions.
Systems and methods that use imaging technologies, computer vision, and augmented reality to provide real-time guidance, localization, and visualization during surgical procedures or for detailed anatomical assessment.
Methods and compositions for identifying, quantifying, or characterizing specific biological molecules (e.g., nucleic acids, proteins, metabolites, antibodies) or microbial species, often for diagnostic, prognostic, or quality control applications.
Methods and apparatus for detecting objects and determining their three-dimensional position and orientation (pose) using imagery or point cloud data, often for navigation, surveying, or environmental understanding.
Technologies that create dynamic and interactive visual content for displays, including virtual/wearable systems, by generating overlays, replacing input streams, or merging real-time user actions with digital environments.
Systems that employ imaging and image processing to automatically detect defects, verify states, or ensure quality control in manufactured goods, printed materials, or industrial processes.
Algorithms and systems for generating, optimizing, and executing trajectories for autonomous vehicles or robots to move through an environment, often involving obstacle avoidance, route validation, and goal reaching.
Techniques for enhancing, encoding, decoding, or separating speech and audio signals, often involving multi-microphone arrays, acoustic echo cancellation, beamforming, or advanced audio compression for improved clarity and quality.
Methods and systems for monitoring the operational status, detecting anomalies, ensuring safe interaction, and preventing damage or injury in robotic systems.
Development of sophisticated optical lens assemblies and computational methods to achieve high-resolution, precise, or specialized imaging, often for medical or scientific applications.
Focuses on the mechanical design, articulation, and actuation of hand-held or robotic surgical instruments, including improvements in stapling, cutting, grasping, and tissue manipulation.
Optical systems and components specifically designed for head-mounted displays, augmented reality (AR) glasses, and virtual reality (VR) headsets, focusing on image projection, waveguide integration, and display durability.
Mobile applications and systems leveraging wireless communication and location data (e.g., GPS, RFID, geo-fencing) to provide context-specific services, transactions, or user interactions.
Physical layout and material composition of individual pixels within a display panel, including active layers, electrodes, light-emitting elements (LEDs, OLEDs), and associated thin-film transistors (TFTs).
Techniques and hardware for autonomous systems to gather and interpret data about their surroundings, including obstacle detection, object recognition, and depth estimation, to inform control decisions.
Design and control of advanced robotic grippers, tools, and mechanical linkages for specific manipulation tasks or operating in challenging environments.
Development of devices and methods for non-invasive or minimally invasive collection and analysis of physiological data, often from wearable sensors, to monitor health, activity, or specific conditions.
Systems and methods for monitoring, controlling, and optimizing the movement of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other aircraft, including real-time connectivity, flight planning, and route modification.
Systems that combine light sources, waveguides, and display elements into unified products for backlighting, automotive applications, general lighting, or color-corrected displays.
Systems that combine data from multiple camera sensors or capture multiple images from different perspectives or qualities, often involving image processing techniques like synthesis to create enhanced or comprehensive views.
Systems enabling wireless communication between vehicles (V2V), vehicles and infrastructure (V2I), or vehicles and other entities (V2X) to share information for traffic management, safety, and navigation.
Techniques for combining data from disparate sensor types (e.g., cameras, radar, mobile device signals) to achieve a more robust and comprehensive understanding of an environment or subject, often leveraging machine learning for interpretation and correlation.
Technologies for generating artificial speech that is personalized, context-aware, or adaptable to specific virtual agents or messaging campaigns, often utilizing text-to-speech (TTS) and audio caching for efficient delivery.
Utilizing machine learning, particularly deep learning, to analyze medical data such as images, sensor readings, or physiological signals for disease prediction, diagnosis, or treatment assessment.
Techniques and hardware architectures designed to efficiently generate and display complex 3D graphics, particularly for interactive applications like virtual reality, focusing on speed and visual quality.
User interface designs and systems that enable multiple users to interact with shared content, provide feedback, or coordinate activities, often across different devices or locations.
Methods and systems for displaying complex data in three-dimensional graphical formats, allowing users to manipulate, explore, and derive insights from the data through interactive controls.
Focuses on the design of medical equipment for ease of use, mobility, and adaptability in various clinical or home environments, including carts, mounting systems, and compact form factors.
AI systems designed to engage in natural language dialogue, maintain conversation state, understand user intent, and generate relevant responses, often across multiple communication channels or modalities.
Specialized hardware, architectural designs, and computational methods to improve the speed, efficiency, and security of artificial intelligence and machine learning model execution, particularly for inference and data processing.
Technologies for transmitting critical alerts and information during emergencies, often involving wireless networks, specialized devices, and protocols to ensure timely and targeted communication to users or emergency services.
Techniques for generating human-like text or other content using large pre-trained models, often involving prompt engineering, speculative decoding, or multi-modal inputs for content creation.
Methods and systems for identifying synthetic or manipulated speech (deepfake audio) using forensic analysis of audio features, such as breath patterns, vocoder signatures, or machine learning models to determine authenticity.
Applications of speech processing and artificial intelligence for medical diagnosis, therapeutic interventions, or accessibility solutions, particularly for conditions affecting speech production or hearing.
Processes for creating or manipulating three-dimensional digital representations of objects or environments, including mesh generation, surface fitting, and depth estimation from multiple views.
The design and manufacturing of integrated circuits that combine optical and electronic components, particularly for high-speed data communication between processors and memory.
Techniques to improve the accuracy and robustness of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems by incorporating contextual information, dynamic hint words, or customized machine learning models for specific domains or users.
Patents
Showing 1-10 of 6196