After its acquisition of the sports tracking company Hawk-Eye, Sony has become active in the Sports Analytics Patent Forecast®, filing multiple patents to protect improvements of Hawk-Eye’s baseline technology the often lacks the same level of patent protection as competitor technologies in the industry. That being said, following the acquisition, Hawk-Eye employees assigning newly formed IP to Sony increased Sony’s presence in the space significantly. However, most of the IP spinning out of Hawk-Eye finds itself in the Data Analytics category as it relates to analyzing data collected by its sensors. However, in its patent application published in February, it looks to be expanding outside of that area.

The application details technology developed by Hawk-Eye to score and compare the performance of two athletes. Examples used in the patent application seem to direct the technology to specific applications in tennis and detail utilizing the cameras developed by Hawk-Eye and used in previous implementations of its technology. This application could be the beginning of a much larger movement by Sony to begin filing patents for different applications of the Hawk-Eye’s technology. 

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