The Game Developers Conference will be held in San Francisco from March 18-22, 2019. To commemorate the GDC, we will highlight two gaming patents during the conference.
U.S. Patent No. 10,158,948 B2 (‘948), issued on December 18, 2018, for “Gaming Headset with Voice Scrambling for Private In-Game Conversations.” The inventor is Richard Kulavik of San Jose, California. The applicant and assignee is Voyetra Turtle Beach, Inc. of Valhalla, New York, the gaming headset device company. The ‘948 specification describes various embodiments for headsets, either wireless or wired, and utilizing circuitry compatible with the IEEE 802.11 or BLUETOOTH® family of standards. Further, and the key novel aspect of the ‘948 patent, is its ability to scramble/descramble chat audio between two game participants through key or key-pair audio burst exchanges. Bursts are scrambled from one base station and descrambled at the second base station. The ‘948 claims are directed to the apparatus of operating the headset in a scrambling/descrambling mode, as well as the method to operate the headset comprising the scrambling/descrambling modes.. The ‘948 patent is one in the family of patents directed to gaming headset with scrambling technology; the ‘948 patent is a continuation of a continuation of the head of family U.S. Patent No. 9,392,355.
Figure 1B illustrates the headset device:
The International Patent Classifications are H04K (secret communication; jamming of communication); and H04R (loudspeakers, microphones, gramophone pick-ups or like acoustic electromechanical transducers, namely, stereophonic arrangements).
Turtle Beach continually has one of the best headset products designed for gaming environments. The gaming industry is a $36 billion one, and game peripherals technology continues to dominate innovation as more participants are drawn to a better gaming experience. The ‘948 patent is an example of scrambling headset technology that caters to this growing market.
If you have any questions on the patenting process, please contact Yonaxis for more information.