Patents

Unleashed Brands founder and CEO Michael Browning Jr. received a patent for the design of a tube slide the week of Aug. 25. [Illustration: Sources, USPTO Patent No. US0D1144710S; DI Studio]

Textron Innovations Inc. won a patent in July for a tiltrotor aircraft that carries its rotor assemblies at the front and back of the fuselage rather than on the wingtips. The filing says the arrangement is more structurally efficient and creates less drag than a conventional setup. [Composite image: Sources, U.S. Patent No. 12,679,535-B2, Fig. 1; DI Studio]

University of North Texas' newly granted patent describes a deepfake-detection system — called "FakeShield" in the patent — designed to spot synthetic images and videos circulating on social media. According to the patent, "These deepfakes look, sound, and feel real. … Due to people's inherent tendency to trust what they see, deepfakes and synthetic media can be useful in disseminating misinformation." Fig. 1 shows a person passing a suspect image through the system from a phone, tablet, or laptop. Dallas-based UNT researchers Saraju P. Mohanty, Elias Kougianos, and Alakananda Mitra are the inventors named on the patent. [Composite image: Sources, U.S. Patent No. 12626532, Fig. 1; DI Studio]

Verizon's patented system is designed to detect "spoofing attacks" (U.S. Patent No. 12587857) on cellular base stations by comparing a station's known "true position" with a "real time position" calculated from satellite signals, generating an alert when the distance between the two exceeds a set threshold. Grapevine inventor Jerry Gamble, Jr. and Flower Mound inventor Sumanth S. Mallya are named on the patent. [Image: istock Illustration: ThinkNeo/iStockphoto; DI Studio]