US 6,025,837 · Granted 2000-02-15

The 1996 Patent That Made TV Guides Interactive and Clickable

Imagine your TV guide suddenly became clickable—that's what this patent does. It lets you click hyperlinks right inside your electronic program guide to jump to websites, movie trailers, or extra info about shows. You can also drag and drop program names around the screen to record shows or tune to channels instantly.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The patent covers an electronic program guide system where hyperlinks are embedded directly into program tiles, channel labels, or description areas. When a viewer clicks one of these hyperlinks, the system launches a browser and displays related content on the television. The claim also protects the drag-and-drop functionality that lets users move program or channel labels to trigger actions like tuning to a channel, recording a program, or jumping to a related website.

Why it matters

This patent arrived at a pivotal moment when cable and satellite TV were merging with the early internet. It essentially invented the idea of making TV guides interactive—transforming them from static schedules into clickable gateways to the web. This became foundational for how modern streaming services, on-demand platforms, and smart TV interfaces work today. The drag-and-drop convenience Microsoft patented became standard UX in digital entertainment.

Real-world use

When you use your smart TV's program guide today and tap a link to watch a trailer or visit a show's website, you're interacting with the exact experience this 1996 patent first protected.

Original USPTO abstract

An interactive entertainment system has a program provider which distributes video content programs to multiple subscribers over a distribution network. Each subscriber has a user interface unit which receives the digital video program and converts it for display on a television, monitor, or other display unit. The user interface unit has a processor and memory. An electronic programming guide (EPG) resides in the memory and is executable on the processor to organize programming information that is descriptive of the programs supplied over the interactive entertainment system. The EPG supports a user interface (UI) which visually correlates programs titles to scheduled viewing times. A hyperlink browser also resides in memory and is executable on the processor. One or more hyperlinks, which reference target resources containing interactive content related to the video programs, are integrated as part of the EPG UI. The hyperlinks can be placed in the program tiles, channel tiles, or description area, and can be situated alone or embedded within other text. When a viewer activates a hyperlink within the EPG, the user interface unit launches the browser to activate the target resource specified by the hyperlink. The data retrieved from the target resource is then displayed on the display unit. The viewer can also drag a particular program or channel label from its location within the EPG UI and drop the label at another location on the display unit. This drag-and-drop operation associates an instruction with the label that will execute in response to activation of the label. The instruction might cause the visual display unit to tune to the program or channel represented by the particular label, or to initiate procedures to record the program when it begins playing, or to jump to a related target resource, such as a Web site.

Patent details

Publication number: US 6,025,837
Filing date: 1996-03-29
Grant date: 2000-02-15
Assignee: Micrsoft Corporation
Inventor(s): MATTHEWS, III; JOSEPH H., LAWLER; FRANK, ROBARTS; JAMES O., BYRNE; DAVID S.
CPC class: H04N21/47

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