A Trip Through Disney’s Weird Patents

The Walt Disney Company is struggling in its tv entertainment business but appears to be doing well nonetheless, as it innovates “in amusement rides and robotics,” says a post from IPWatchdog. Part way through 2015 the company had earned more than 200 patents, some of them developed through a partnership with Carnegie Mellon University. Among Disney’s recent patents (described in detail in this post) are a display system for amusement rides that provides different ride experiences for passengers in the same car (“Selective Illumination of Physical Scenery in Amusement Park Ride”) and a method that improves the rendering of fur and hair in computer generated imagery.