ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,689,794, issued on July 21, was assigned to Adeia Guides Inc. (San Jose, Calif.).

"Systems and methods for obscuring presentation of media objects during playback of video based on interactions with other media objects" was invented by Michael McCarty (Agoura Hills, Calif.) and Glen E. Roe (Simi Valley, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Systems and methods are provided for obscuring a presence of a media object in a video after a user fulfills an interaction requirement with a related media object. The system detects, an interaction with a media object and determines characteristics of the interaction. The system correlates character...