International patent coverage expands the footprint of PPL’s Drone-on-Demand offering to major geographic markets; common/standardized geofence-based approach to BVLOS enables all manners of UAV/UAM applications across Enterprise, Government and Consumer verticals.

AUSTIN, Texas & BEIJING & TORONTO – Oct. 19, 2020 – PRLog — PicPocket-Labs (“PicPocket” or “PPL”) is pleased to announce that it has received a Notice of Allowance from both the China National Intellectual Property Office (Patent Application No. 201580075902.4) as well as the USPTO (Patent Application No. 16/800,810, a continuation of US Patent No. 10,640,208) for related applications, each entitled “DRONE BASED SYSTEMS AND METHODOLOGIES FOR CAPTURING IMAGES.”

The patent family pertains to a “drone-on-demand” service which allows a user to send or request an unmanned autonomous vehicle (UAV) to a location or a target of interest (stationary or moving) for, among other purposes, inspection/mapping, media/data capture, urban air mobility and/or drone deliveries. Combined with PicPocket’s seminal, geofencing patents (and pending applications), the ability to assume control over a UAV (its navigation, media/data capture, resident drone hardware, etc.) within a specific geographic area (or ‘geofence’), is fundamental to advance a beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) service. For instance, used in conjunction with PPL’s US Patent No. 10,785,323 (PCT/US2016/012244 – “USE OF A DYNAMIC GEOFENCE TO CONTROL MEDIA SHARING AND AGGREGATION ASSOCIATED WITH A MOBILE TARGET”), the combination of technologies enables seamless aerial monitoring of an ‘event’ where the geography and/or participants change over time.

Following the allowances by both the US and Chinese Patent Offices, PPL has amended its corresponding Canadian application to reflect the issued/allowed US method and system claims and has sought to expedite allowance of the Canadian application by way of a Patent Prosecution Highway request.

“Given how much of PicPocket-Labs revolves around geofencing – and that a drone, with its wide assortment of media/data -capture hardware and location awareness capabilities makes it the airborne equivalent of your everyday mobile device (smartphone, tablet, wearables, etc.) – the idea of marrying the two technologies was on our roadmap from day one” explains Wolfram Gauglitz, Founder and CEO of PicPocket-Labs, Inc. “Most drone missions have a stated purpose, such as to document a property and casualty claim, to provide situational awareness to first-responders, to conduct remote inspection of critical infrastructure and/or to film, for entertainment purposes, live-events ranging from weddings to concerts to professional and even youth sports. In the near future, we expect that anyone will be able to request a drone to carry-out specific one-off tasks on a whim or as part of a monthly subscription (e.g. Surveillance-as-a-Service.) The ability to offer these services based on date, time and location in both a fully and semi-autonomous mode, opens up all sorts of opportunities for “on-demand” and “as-a-service” models.”

“The use of drones in insurance, first-responder networks, agriculture, infrastructure inspection, connected stadiums and live-events is big business – estimated to exceed over $120B by this time next year. As companies large and small embrace digital technologies to help streamline their operations and deliver new services, there’s no telling to what extent drones will play a role in almost every industry,” states Gauglitz.

PicPocket-Labs, Inc. is an early pioneer in geofencing-based IT solutions with offices in Austin and Dallas, TX. The company is actively seeking strategic-customer-partners among drone manufacturers, global and regional telecommunications players and UTM and UAM service providers operating in the aforementioned regions.

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