US 5,929,849 · Granted 1999-07-27

The 1999 Patent That Imagined Clickable TV

Imagine watching TV and being able to click on objects in the picture to visit websites linked to them. This patent from 1999 describes exactly that—embedding invisible web links into TV broadcasts so viewers could jump from a commercial or show directly to the internet.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers a system that combines video frames with embedded URL data, allowing viewers to click on visual elements in a broadcast and be automatically connected to associated websites. What's protected here is the method of associating specific image entities (like products, logos, or characters) with web links and letting users interact with those links directly through the TV display.

Why it matters

This patent arrived at a pivotal moment—1996-1999—when the internet was exploding but TV and web were still separate worlds. It protected an early vision of interactive television, where advertising and entertainment could directly funnel viewers to the internet. Though clickable TV never became mainstream in the way this patent envisioned, it anticipated concepts like interactive streaming and shoppable content that platforms use today.

Real-world use

If you were watching a 1990s commercial for sneakers and could click on the shoe itself to visit the brand's store—that's the technology this patent locked down.

Original USPTO abstract

A display system receives a data stream having successive image frame data in frame regions and Internet Universal Resource Locator (URL) data and association data in data regions between frame regions, and displays on a display monitor successive frames derived from the image frame data. The association data associates one or more image entities in successive frames with one or more URLs, and a viewer, by selecting an associated image entity in the display, causes the system to access the Internet, to connect to a source on the Internet associated with the URL, to download a WEB page from the source, and to display the WEB page in the display. The viewer may interact with the displayed WEB page to access further related information. Entities may be enhanced in the display to indicate association with a hidden URL.

Patent details

Publication number: US 5,929,849
Filing date: 1996-05-02
Grant date: 1999-07-27
Assignee: Phoenix Technologies, Ltd.
Inventor(s): KIKINIS; DAN
CPC class: H04N7/16

View original record on Google Patents →

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