Mobile esports company Skillz has announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued the company two new patents.
Skillz now has exclusive rights to both patented technologies and these will join its pre-existing portfolio and bring the company’s total to six esports-related patents.
U.S. Patent 9,479,602 covers the technology behind Skillz Arena, an esports event platform through which anyone can organise, host and broadcast mobile esports competitions with up to 50,000 players. This was debuted in 2015 at gaming expo E3, with the purpose being to focus and facilitate the grassroots and provide streamers, brands, non-profits, bars and other venues the ability to run their own esports tournaments with ‘real prizes, live video streams, leaderboards and dynamic overlays’. These competitions can be invite-only, they can be geolocated to a specific venue, or simply made available to anyone who has downloaded the game.
The second patent, with the catchy title of U.S. Patent 9,630,097, covers a mobile video capture and live-streaming technology that enables mobile esports events to be broadcast live on streaming platforms such as Twitch and YouTube. The Skillz live-streaming technology was the first to support real-time, over-the-air streaming for games built in any development framework.
Andrew Paradise, CEO and Founder of Skillz commented: “Organized competitions and spectatorship are what make a game into a sport, transforming activities like basketball and soccer into the global sports phenomena they are today.
“We want to make esports more accessible to developers, streamers, viewers and players of every level. These technologies allows us to do that.”
With the growth of mobile esports in the past year, and the successes of titles such as Super Evil’s Vainglory and Finnish FPS title Critical Ops, Skillz is well placed to facilitate its continued growth at a more grassroots level.
Esports Insider says: Two new patents will add fuel to the Skillz fire. The company’s numbers so far have been impressive and the Skillz Arena feature in particular should continue to prove evermore popular.