Unleashed Brands founder and CEO Michael Browning Jr. received patents for the design of two slides in use at the Bedford-based company’s Urban Air Adventure Parks. The awards came the week of Aug. 25, a week in which North Texas ranked No. 8 among 250 metro areas for patent production.

The patents cover the design of a tube slide and a flat racer slide. In July 2024, Urban Air unveiled a collection of Adventure Slides it planned to add to the trampolines, rope courses and other activities at its sites nationwide. At the time, it described the designs for the Surf, Scoop, Racer, Launch and Tube slides as patent-pending.

Browning founded Urban Air in Southlake in 2011 and began franchising the concept by 2014. He launched Unleashed Brands in 2021, expanding on the ideas of family entertainment and youth enrichment. Today, Unleashed’s portfolio includes Urban Air, Sylvan Learning, The Little Gym, Water Wings Swim School, Premier Martial Arts, Snapology and Class 101.

More North Texas inventions

Other North Texas companies with notable patents the week of Aug. 25 include:

Texas Instruments Inc. (Dallas) once again led the region by volume with 18 patents. These include a secure convolutional neural network accelerator, an embedded pattern generator, a low-forward-voltage passive full-bridge rectifier and a hybrid addressing method for imaging and vision data.

Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America Inc. (Plano) received 15 patents. The grants covered a personalized adaptive cruise control system that learns a driver’s preferred following gap, a bull bar drop-down structure designed to reduce collision damage, a bicycle saddle system built with spring-based vibration isolation and a method for gamifying the driving environment based on a vehicle occupant’s emotional state.

Textron Innovations Inc. received six patents naming inventors based primarily in Fort Worth. The grants included a system that can jettison a battery pack from an aircraft during thermal runaway, malfunction or an impending crash; a heliport docking system; and a planetary gearbox system.

Emerson Process Management Regulator Technologies Inc. (McKinney) received two patents tied to flame arresters, which are devices used to prevent flames from propagating through industrial gas piping.

Mary Kay Inc. (Addison) received two patents for plant-based skin care formulations. The first covers a topical composition built around magnolia bark extract, grape extract, sunflower seed oil, tocopherol and glycerin. The second covers a method of treating skin conditions using an extract of an African mahogany tree called Khaya senegalensis.

Patent information is provided by Joe Chiarella, founder of patent analytics company Patent Index and publisher of The Inventiveness Index. For additional details on the patents granted below, search the USPTO Patent Full-Text and Image Database.