• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, January 13, 2015

Nielsen rival Rentrak has received another important piece of intellectual property in its push to become the dominant provider of TV audience ratings derived from digital set-top devices: a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for a method for detecting and correcting “dropped” set-top box viewing data.

The patent, which was issued Jan. 6, covers a process Rentrak uses to adjust for a household’s set-top tuning data when a cable, telco of satellite operator experiences inadvertent outages.