Plain Inference

AI, Pricing & Privacy Briefing

Patent Watch

A running catalog of AI consumer-space patents surfaced by the daily briefing — organized by theme and linked to primary sources.

Coverage note: US patent applications typically publish ~18 months after filing, so “new” here means newly published, not newly filed. A patent is added when it is first published, or when it is newly referenced in news coverage or a company blog post.

40 patents catalogued6 of 6 categories populatedLast updated July 13, 2026

Algorithmic & Dynamic Pricing

24 patents

Patents covering automated price-setting systems, demand forecasting, price elasticity modeling, and personalized or dynamic pricing engines. Includes both market-condition dynamic pricing and consumer-characteristic personalized pricing.

WalmartPublished March 2026

Machine Learning Demand Prediction and Price Recommendation Using Third-Party Data

US12572954B2 · Google Patents ↗

A machine learning model trained on purchase history, payment methods, customer identification, and third-party data sources to predict item demand and generate recommended prices. The schematic in the filing explicitly shows third-party data as an input to the pricing engine — making this the more controversial of Walmart's two 2026 pricing patents, directly analogous to airline surveillance pricing that uses consumer identity signals to set fares. Where US12524776B2 automates markdown timing, this patent closes the loop by incorporating outside behavioral data to calibrate what price a given consumer will bear.

Added to catalog May 18, 2026

WalmartPublished January 2026

System and Method for Dynamically and Automatically Updating Item Prices on E-Commerce Platform

US12524776B2 · Google Patents ↗

A machine learning system that uses price elasticity data and predicted demand to automatically generate markdown prices across Walmart's e-commerce platform. The patent covers two model paths: a primary model that fires when both elasticity and demand data are available (enabling precise per-item optimization), and a decay-rate fallback for when they are not — both bounded by configurable upper and lower price limits. Walmart publicly characterizes this as a 'markdown tool' rather than a dynamic or personalized pricing engine, but the underlying data infrastructure — per-item elasticity modeling, real-time demand signals — would make consumer-characteristic pricing technically feasible at scale. This is one of approximately 50 US patents Walmart secured in 2026.

Added to catalog May 17, 2026

JDA Software GroupPublished June 2019

Travel price optimization (TPO)

US10332134B2 · Google Patents ↗

A revenue-management engine that applies price-sensitive demand forecasting to set dynamic prices across travel and hospitality inventory — hotel rooms, car rentals, passenger transport, air cargo. It models how demand responds to price at a granular, time-sensitive level and recommends the revenue-maximizing price as conditions shift. One of the commercial dynamic-pricing engines that long predate the current surveillance-pricing debate.

Added to catalog Jun 28, 2026

Uber TechnologiesPublished May 2019

Facilitating direct rider driver pairing for mass egress areas

US10304277B2 · Google Patents ↗

Coordinates rider–driver matching around mass-egress venues such as stadiums and concerts and applies a price multiplier — a surge price — to those high-demand locations. The system ties pricing directly to a real-time supply–demand imbalance at a specific place and moment. Surge pricing expressed as location-aware demand response.

Added to catalog Jun 28, 2026

IndividualPublished February 2019

Dynamic repricing of an online subscription

US10198756B2 · Google Patents ↗

Automatically adjusts the price of an online subscription over time based on usage and engagement signals. Pricing becomes a moving target tuned to each subscriber's behavior rather than a fixed published rate.

Added to catalog Jun 28, 2026

IndividualPublished April 2017

Real-time dynamic pricing system

US20170109767A1 · Google Patents ↗

A real-time pricing system that ingests live market and competitor signals — including prices scraped from competitor webstores — and computes an optimal price per product on the fly. Illustrates how automated competitor monitoring became a standard input to dynamic pricing.

Added to catalog Jun 28, 2026

Solum Co LtdPublished September 2016

Electronic shelf label tag, electronic shelf label system for time-division transmission of display data and change command data, and operating method thereof

US9454919B2 · Google Patents ↗

An electronic shelf label system that schedules and pushes display and price-change data to in-store tags over a time-division wireless channel. It is the physical delivery layer for dynamic pricing — the mechanism that lets a retailer change a shelf price centrally and instantly. The same class of infrastructure now at the center of the digital-shelf-label and surveillance-pricing backlash.

Added to catalog Jun 28, 2026

International Business MachinesPublished April 2015

Personalized pricing for omni-channel retailers with applications to mitigate showrooming

US20150100384A1 · Google Patents ↗

Computes individualized prices for omni-channel retail by modeling a shopper's purchase history and willingness to wait, predicting the probability they buy now versus later, and pricing to convert them — explicitly to counter 'showrooming.' Consumer-characteristic personalized pricing, the contested kind, described plainly in 2015.

Added to catalog Jun 28, 2026

QualcommPublished August 2014

System and Method For Providing A Personalized Shopping Experience and Personalized Pricing of Products and Services With A Portable Computing Device

US20140239066A1 · Google Patents ↗

Delivers a personalized shopping experience and personalized pricing to a consumer through their portable device in-store, keyed to identity and context. An early blueprint for individualized, device-mediated pricing at the shelf.

Added to catalog Jun 28, 2026

TravelClickPublished August 2014

Methods and systems for setting optimal hotel property prices

US20140222518A1 · Google Patents ↗

Sets dynamic hotel room prices for transient demand, raising or lowering rates as booking pace and remaining supply change in order to maximize revenue. Classic hospitality revenue management — market-condition dynamic pricing rather than personalized pricing.

Added to catalog Jun 28, 2026

Pricer ABPublished July 2014

Method and arrangements for electronic shelf labels

US20140214620A1 · Google Patents ↗

Methods and arrangements for wirelessly changing the price and information shown on electronic shelf labels from a central pricing application. Part of the ESL infrastructure that makes frequent, centrally controlled price changes operationally trivial.

Added to catalog Jun 28, 2026

IndividualPublished May 2014

Method for managing listing prices in an ecommerce environment

US20140136356A1 · Google Patents ↗

A method for repricing marketplace listings to gain or hold competitive advantage, automating the research of comparable listings to find an optimal price. Captures the automated-repricing dynamic that drives e-commerce price volatility.

Added to catalog Jun 28, 2026

Overstock.comPublished March 2014

Pricing and forecasting

US8676632B1 · Google Patents ↗

A pricing-and-forecasting system with an elasticity module that computes price elasticity from historical sales — the ratio of demand change to price change — to guide pricing decisions. Elasticity modeling is the quantitative core that turns raw sales data into a dynamic price.

Added to catalog Jun 28, 2026

SafewayPublished March 2014

Adaptable retail pricing environment and electronic exchange, delivering customized buyer promotion rewards and discounts

US8671018B2 · Google Patents ↗

An individualized discount-and-reward server tied to a retailer loyalty program, delivering customized per-buyer promotions and prices from stored customer data. Personalized pricing routed through loyalty data — a grocery-retail antecedent of today's surveillance-pricing concerns.

Added to catalog Jun 28, 2026

Opera SolutionsPublished February 2014

System and Method for Demand Forecasting

US20140039979A1 · Google Patents ↗

A demand-forecasting system that incorporates price elasticity of demand to improve prediction accuracy and enable price optimization and inventory management. The forecasting-plus-elasticity engine that sits underneath automated price-setting.

Added to catalog Jun 28, 2026

US AirwaysPublished December 2013

Dynamic cost analysis and overbooking optimization methods and systems

US8600787B2 · Google Patents ↗

Determines the revenue-optimal number of airline seats to sell using probabilistic demand distributions and passenger history, optimizing overbooking and fare mix. Airline revenue management — the discipline from which much of retail dynamic pricing descends.

Added to catalog Jun 28, 2026

Oracle InternationalPublished October 2013

Time-dependent product pricing optimizer

US20130275183A1 · Google Patents ↗

A time-dependent product pricing optimizer that sets prices as a function of time and demand conditions. A general-purpose dynamic-pricing engine from a major enterprise software vendor.

Added to catalog Jun 28, 2026

Uber TechnologiesPublished October 2013

Enabling a user to verify a price change for an on-demand service

US20130268406A1 · Google Patents ↗

Uber's surge-confirmation mechanism: when prices spike, the rider must actively confirm the multiplier — for example by typing the surge rate — before booking. Notable less for the pricing math than for making real-time, demand-based pricing a visible and explicitly confirmed consumer experience.

Added to catalog Jun 28, 2026

Uber TechnologiesPublished September 2013

System and method for dynamically adjusting prices for services

US20130246207A1 · Google Patents ↗

A system for dynamically adjusting the price of on-demand services in response to real-time supply and demand. The core surge-pricing apparatus behind ride-hail dynamic fares.

Added to catalog Jun 28, 2026

Amadeus SASPublished January 2013

Method and system for revenue management system based on market pricing

US20130006712A1 · Google Patents ↗

Integrates external market-price signals into a revenue-management system to update price recommendations as competitor and market conditions move. Market-responsive dynamic pricing for travel inventory.

Added to catalog Jun 28, 2026

IndividualPublished November 2012

Dynamic pricing of access to content where pricing varies with user behavior over time to optimize total revenue and users are matched to specific content of interest

US20120303418A1 · Google Patents ↗

Dynamically prices access to content where the price varies with an individual user's behavior over time to maximize total revenue, matching users to specific content. An explicit early articulation of behavior-conditioned personalized pricing.

Added to catalog Jun 28, 2026

Murphy Oil USAPublished November 2012

Automated price management system

US8306851B2 · Google Patents ↗

An automated price-management system that adjusts prices based on current competitor pricing, site sales, and other factors, either manually or automatically. Competitor-driven automated repricing in a bricks-and-mortar (fuel retail) setting.

Added to catalog Jun 28, 2026

Amazon TechnologiesPublished July 2012

Method and computer-readable medium for automated dynamic pricing of products with parameter-driven state transitions

US8224708B1 · Google Patents ↗

Amazon's automated dynamic-pricing method that recommends pricing mechanisms and values from product category, market demand, and sales history, using parameter-driven state transitions. A foundational 2010s building block for algorithmic price-setting at scale.

Added to catalog Jun 28, 2026

Amazon TechnologiesPublished November 2006

Dynamic Pricing System

US7133848B2 · Google Patents ↗

Amazon's foundational dynamic pricing patent — the original architecture for adjusting prices in real time based on demand signals, competitor data, and inventory levels. Granted in 2006, this is the upstream ancestor of the entire algorithmic pricing patent landscape now being contested in regulatory proceedings and state legislatures. The infrastructure it describes — continuous price monitoring, automated adjustment triggers, competitive benchmarking — is what the FTC's 2024 surveillance-pricing study characterized as a systemic threat to consumer welfare.

In the news(3)

Added to catalog May 18, 2026

Emotion AI & Behavioral Inference

8 patents

Patents covering facial expression recognition, sentiment analysis, affective computing, and systems that infer or respond to user emotional states for commercial purposes.

Meta PlatformsPublished July 2026

Emotional State Analysis and Real-Time Fitness Coaching

US20260182881A1 · Google Patents ↗

Describes a wearable that continuously records the user's voice — with no wake word — transcribes it, and runs a machine learning model over both the words and nonverbal cues like tone, pitch, sighs, and laughter to infer emotional state. Those mood signals are correlated with time of day, physical location, current activity, app usage, and even medication timing, and compiled into periodic reports on the user's emotional trends, with quotes from their own conversations cited as evidence. The filing frames this as fitness coaching, but the claims are written to work across contexts: it is a persistent mood log built from ambient audio collected throughout daily life. Filed December 2025 and published July 2, 2026; drew broad coverage in early July over what always-on emotional monitoring would mean for the people wearing it — and everyone within earshot.

Added to catalog Jul 13, 2026

Valence AIPublished June 2026

Real-Time Emotional State Detection from Live Speech — Core Signal Processing Pipeline (patent number to be verified)

US-PENDING-VALENCE-1 · Google Patents ↗

One of two U.S. patents Valence AI announced on June 24, 2026, covering its core signal processing pipeline for classifying a speaker's emotional state from live speech in real time. The system converts raw call audio into an emotion classification from tone, tempo, and pacing, normalizing for pitch and timbre so the output reflects emotional state rather than demographic profile. The company sells this as infrastructure to contact centers and voice AI platforms across support, financial services, and healthcare — meaning consumers on ordinary service calls have their frustration, hesitation, and stress converted into structured data that shapes how the call is handled. NOTE: the patent number and exact grant date have not yet been publicly disclosed and are still to be verified; the link below is the company's announcement, and this entry should be updated with the USPTO number once it surfaces. Date shown is the announcement date.

Added to catalog Jul 13, 2026

Valence AIPublished June 2026

Real-Time Emotional State Detection from Live Speech — Live Haptic Feedback Extension (patent number to be verified)

US-PENDING-VALENCE-2 · Google Patents ↗

The second of two U.S. patents Valence AI announced on June 24, 2026, extending its real-time speech emotion classification method to deliver live haptic feedback — physically signaling a wearer or agent about the emotional state detected in the person they are speaking with. Built on the same pipeline that converts vocal cues into structured emotional data during live calls, it moves emotion inference from analytics into in-the-moment intervention: the person being read receives no notice that their voice is being scored. NOTE: the patent number and exact grant date have not yet been publicly disclosed and are still to be verified; the link below is the company's announcement, and this entry should be updated with the USPTO number once it surfaces. Date shown is the announcement date.

Added to catalog Jul 13, 2026

GooglePublished February 2025

Speech Emotion Recognition Using Large Language Models

US20250061917A1 · Google Patents ↗

Applies large language models to real-time speech to infer the speaker's emotional state — enabling emotion-aware responses, personalization, and targeting at scale across Google's voice and search surfaces. The architecture moves emotion inference from keyword-based heuristics to continuous, context-sensitive LLM analysis of tone, prosody, and content together. Published February 2025; surfaced in the May 11 briefing in the context of the EU AI Act's August 2026 emotion-AI compliance deadline.

Added to catalog May 18, 2026

Ford Motor CompanyPublished October 2019

Methods and Vehicles for Capturing Emotion of a Human Driver and Moderating Vehicle Response

US10453453B2 · Google Patents ↗

Captures facial expressions and voice patterns from a driver over time, fuses them to predict emotional state, and adjusts vehicle behavior accordingly — extending commercial emotion inference into the automobile. The system analyzes changes in facial expression across a sequence of camera frames and correlates them with voice profile shifts to generate an emotion prediction. Cited in the May 5 briefing as a 'know phase' marker in the tobacco-playbook arc: industry demonstrably knew how to capture and act on driver emotional state years before any regulatory framework existed to govern it.

Added to catalog May 18, 2026

Cogito CorporationPublished April 2019

Systems and Methods for Identifying Human Emotions and/or Mental Health States Based on Analyses of Audio Inputs and/or Behavioral Data Collected from Computing Devices

US10276188B2 · Google Patents ↗

Statistical models trained on passive mobile device behavioral signals — call frequency, SMS cadence, GPS movement patterns, accelerometer data — combined with vocal acoustic features extracted from audio diaries, to infer mental health states and emotion. The architecture describes continuous passive collection of behavioral traces from devices people carry at all times, with no active user input required. A foundational building block for the passive behavioral surveillance pipeline that underlies modern emotion AI products.

Added to catalog May 18, 2026

Amazon TechnologiesPublished October 2018

Voice-Based Determination of Physical and Emotional Characteristics of Users

US10096319B1 · Google Patents ↗

Alexa analyzes tone, pitch, speech pace, coughs, and sniffles to detect emotional and physical states — and the patent explicitly routes the findings toward 'highly targeted audio content, such as audio advertisements or promotions.' One example in the filing: a user coughs while asking about being hungry; Alexa detects the cough, infers illness, offers chicken soup, and when refused escalates to cough drops with one-hour delivery. The first confirmed instance of in-home emotion inference directly piped to an advertising and commerce engine.

Added to catalog May 18, 2026

Meta PlatformsPublished August 2015

Emotion Detection (Foundational)

US20150242679A1 · Google Patents ↗

An early Meta application for detecting user emotional states from platform interaction data — a foundational building block for the behavioral profiling pipeline later formalized in US12513102B2. Filed in 2015, the application describes inferring emotional states from how users engage with content: dwell time, interaction patterns, and response behaviors. No confirmed 2026-published equivalent; included as a foundational filing that establishes Meta's decade-long investment in emotion inference as a core platform capability.

Added to catalog May 18, 2026

Consumer Data & Privacy

4 patents

Patents covering data collection architectures, behavioral profiling systems, data broker infrastructure, and consumer data deletion or privacy-preserving mechanisms.

EquifaxPublished June 2026

Risk Assessment for Personally Identifiable Information Associated with Controlling Interactions Between Computing Systems

EFX-TBV-PII-RISK · Google Patents ↗

Isolates individual identity elements a consumer leaves behind in a transaction — email address, phone number, device ID — and scores each against modeled historical fraud distributions (chargebacks, declines) to rate the risk of card-not-present purchases. Equifax says the method is already deployed in its Consumer Insights, Signal Score for Email, and Payments Fraud products. It is data-broker infrastructure in its purest form: a credit bureau converting the contact details and devices of ordinary shoppers into behavioral risk scores that merchants act on and consumers never see, with no mechanism for a person to know why their transaction was flagged. NOTE: patent number to be verified — announced in Equifax's June 30, 2026 patent-portfolio release without a USPTO number; this entry links to the announcement until the number is confirmed.

In the news(1)

Added to catalog Jul 13, 2026

EquifaxPublished June 2026

Data Transformation Techniques for Event Data in Multi-System Computing Environments

EFX-TBV-DATA-FABRIC · Google Patents ↗

Coordinates event data moving between multiple computing systems by holding records until defined triggers are met, so downstream systems receive complete, structured datasets rather than fragments — the patented plumbing of Equifax's 'data fabric.' That fabric ingests 20 billion records a month and orchestrates more than 250 billion keyed and linked consumer records unified from over 100 formerly siloed sources, feeding products like Account Protection, Identity Proofing, and Synthetic Identity Risk. Nominally back-office, it matters because it is the orchestration layer that makes bureau-scale profiling operate in real time: the more seamlessly consumer records flow between systems, the less friction stands between data collection and its use. NOTE: patent number to be verified — announced in Equifax's June 30, 2026 patent-portfolio release without a USPTO number; this entry links to the announcement until the number is confirmed.

In the news(1)

Added to catalog Jul 13, 2026

Experian Information SolutionsPublished February 2026

Access control system for implementing access restrictions of regulated database records while identifying and providing indicators of regulated database records matching validation criteria

US12541610B2 · Google Patents ↗

A digital targeting system that scans a regulated consumer database, identifies the users who satisfy an advertiser's 'content factors,' and outputs a pre-validated list of those users to be matched against external digital-ID databases — so a display network can serve them ads. It operates over records governed by data-sharing restrictions (such as government-regulated or financial data), framing itself around compliance even as its purpose is to make otherwise-restricted consumer records addressable for targeting. Filed by Experian, one of the largest consumer data brokers, and granted February 2026. It is the identity-graph plumbing beneath behavioral advertising: the mechanism that turns regulated personal records into targetable ad audiences, with consent and accountability handled as access-control bookkeeping rather than as a consumer choice.

Added to catalog Jun 28, 2026

Meta PlatformsPublished February 2026

Generating and Presenting Personalized Content Based on Historical User Data (Posthumous Digital Persona)

US12513102B2 · Google Patents ↗

Constructs a persistent AI persona from a user's behavioral, emotional, and interaction data — including post-mortem operation (posthumous digital presence). The system analyzes a lifetime of platform activity to generate a digital twin capable of posting, reacting, and interacting on the user's behalf, including after death. Originally filed by Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth in 2023; granted December 2025 and published February 2026. Meta has stated it has no current plans to ship this as a product, describing it as a protective filing — the same framing used across the tobacco-playbook 'deny' phase. The most-cited patent across all daily briefing editions.

Added to catalog May 18, 2026

Agentic Commerce & Payments

2 patents

Patents covering AI agents making autonomous purchases, agentic payment authorization protocols, AI shopping agents, and agent identity verification systems.

Visa International Service AssociationPublished January 2026

On Demand Tokenization Processing

US20260006023A1 · Google Patents ↗

Dynamic token generation and scoping for payment transactions — the underlying credential architecture for Visa's Intelligent Commerce Connect agent payment platform. The system enables AI agents to be issued payment credentials scoped to a specific agent identity, spending limits, and permitted merchant categories, so that an autonomous agent can complete purchases within a defined consent boundary without exposing the consumer's underlying card credentials. Filed June 2024; part of the broader Visa/Mastercard race to own the credential layer of agentic commerce.

Added to catalog May 18, 2026

Tyntre, LLCPublished November 2025

Blockchain-Based Artificial Intelligence Agent Life Cycle Management and Authentication Systems and Methods

US12483411B1 · Google Patents ↗

A blockchain framework for registering and authenticating AI agents across their entire life cycle: each agent is issued an identity token tied to a cryptographic hash of its code and model weights, linked to its human owner's identity token, and must re-register whenever anything about it changes. In the patent's banking use case, a personal AI financial agent presents its own token plus a delegation token to make payments within preset limits (e.g., $500 per transaction), while a trust score built from its transaction history and behavioral signature — API call patterns, decision-flow consistency, computational footprint — determines how often it must re-authenticate. Every resource request an agent makes is logged as a blockchain transaction, and deviations from its usual behavior trigger forced re-verification or token revocation. This is the accountability side of agentic commerce — infrastructure for answering how a bank knows the AI spending your money is the one you authorized, and unmodified since you authorized it. Notably filed not by a payments network but by a small Irvine, California LLC, months before Visa and Mastercard shipped their own agent-identity token schemes.

Added to catalog Jul 13, 2026

Consumer Financial AI

1 patent

Patents covering AI-driven financial advice, robo-advisory systems, AI credit decisioning, automated banking assistants, and sentiment-aware financial tools.

JPMorgan ChasePublished April 2026

Method and System for Training and Fine-Tuning Large Language Models in Generating Stock Ratings Predictions

US20260111964A1 · Google Patents ↗

The system constructs structured prompts from a company's historical stock data, financial fundamentals, and AI-compressed news summaries, then directs a large language model to produce analyst-style buy, hold, or sell ratings across 1-, 3-, 6-, 12-, and 18-month horizons. It ingests company identifiers, historical price returns, earnings and revenue figures, raw news articles filtered and summarized by a preprocessing LLM, and news-derived sentiment scores on a −5 to +5 scale. A chain-of-verification step asks the LLM to explain its reasoning and checks date calculations as a hallucination guard; the model can also be fine-tuned on ground-truth forward-return labels using LoRA. JPMorgan is patenting the infrastructure for AI-automated equity research — a system that could influence retail investor decisions through AI-generated ratings without the transparency or accountability requirements that apply to licensed human analysts.

Added to catalog May 22, 2026

Other

1 patent

AI consumer-space patents relevant to the extraction-vs.-accountability thesis that don't fit neatly into the above categories.

Google LLCPublished January 2026

AI-Generated Content Page Tailored to a Specific User

US12536233B1 · Google Patents ↗

Scores a retailer's landing page in real time against a user's search intent, past queries, location, and conversion signals. If the page underperforms a threshold — based on bounce rate, click-through rate, or conversion quality — Google automatically substitutes an AI-generated replacement page, without the retailer's knowledge or consent. Granted January 27, 2026; filed July 2024. Widely covered as 'Google patented the right to replace your website.' The consumer data implications are significant: the system requires continuous behavioral tracking of users across sessions to generate the intent signals that trigger replacement.

Added to catalog May 18, 2026

This catalog is maintained by the automated AI, Pricing & Privacy daily briefing. Patents are added when they are newly published by the USPTO or EPO, or when a news article, regulatory filing, or company publication brings a relevant patent to our attention. It is not an exhaustive survey of all filings in these spaces. All patent links lead to Google Patents or the USPTO.