Ex Parte Dhanakshirur et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Feb 17, 2016

13360418 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 17, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
13/360,418 01127/2012
91337 7590 02/19/2016
Nuance Communications, Inc.
c/o Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, P.C.
600 Atlantic A venue
Boston, MA 02210-2206
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Girish Dhanakshirur
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS
P.O. Box 1450
Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450
www .uspto.gov
ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
N0484.70607US01 7472
EXAMINER
ADESANYA, OLUJIMI A
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2658
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
02/19/2016 ELECTRONIC
Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding.
The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication.
Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the
following e-mail address( es):
Patents_ eOfficeAction @wolfgreenfield.com
N0484_eOfficeAction@WolfGreenfield.com
IP.Inbox@nuance.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte GIRISH DHANAKSHIRUR and JAMES R. LEWIS
Appeal2014-002405
Application 13/360,418
Technology Center 2600
Before JOSEPH L. DIXON, JAMES R. HUGHES, and ERIC S. FRAHM,
Administrative Patent Judges.
FRAHM, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appeal2014-002405
Application 13/360,418
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from a rejection of claims 1,
16, and 18-35. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
The invention relates to collecting prompts in an interactive voice
response system in order to replace Text to Speech (TTS) generated audio
prompts with professionally recorded audio (see Spec. i-fi-f l, 5-7). Claim 1,
reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter:
1. A method comprising:
executing a voice application that presents one or more
user prompts as audio, wherein the voice application
dynamically generates text for at least a first user prompt during
execution of the voice application;
determining, during execution of the voice application,
that recorded audio corresponding to the text of the first user
prompt is not available; and
in response to the determining, storing the text of the first
user prompt in a set of prompt texts for which recorded audio is
to be recorded.
REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Gilmore
Da Palma
Ju
US 2003/0216923 Al
US 2005/0131707 Al
US 2006/0025996 A 1
2
Nov. 20, 2003
June 16, 2005
Feb.2,2006
Appeal2014-002405
Application 13/360,418
REJECTIONS
The Examiner made the following rejections: 1
Claims 1, 16, 18-21, 26, 27, and 31-33 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C
§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over Gilmore and Ju.
Claims 22-25, 28-30, 34, and 35 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C
§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over Gilmore, Ju, and Da Palma.
ANALYSIS
Appellants contend the "Office Action does not specifically identify
how one of ordinary skill would have modified Gilmore's system to insert
Ju's confirmation message" and the "Office Action does not explain why
'improving the quality of voice dialing systems' would have provided a
reason for one of ordinary skill to modify Gilmore, when Gilmore does not
relate to voice dialing systems at all" (Br. 10). Appellants also contend the
combination of Gilmore and Ju does not disclose "the voice application
dynamically generates text for at least a first user prompt during execution
of the voice application," and "in response to the determining [that recorded
audio corresponding to the text of the first user prompt is not available],
storing the text of the first user prompt in a set of prompt texts for which
recorded audio is to be recorded," as recited in claim 1 (Br. 11-13). We
disagree with Appellants.
Gilmore discloses an interactive voice response system as follows:
A dynamic content generation (DCG) command may be
used in the voice scripts to significantly increase the ability of
the scripts to dynamically change in response to different types
1 The Examiner has withdrawn the double patenting rejection of claims 1,
16, and 18-35 (Ans. 2).
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Appeal2014-002405
Application 13/360,418
of callers and in response to different caller inputs. DCG
commands are inserted into the text of the scripts when the
scripts are created, prior to storing them in data store 214. When
the voice gateway 208 requests a script from the application
server 212, the application server 212 access the script from the
data store 214 and processes the script by resolving any DCG
commands within the script into voice instructions (i.e., grammar
or prompt instructions). The server 212 then sends the processed
script to the voice gateway 208, and the voice gateway 208
presents the script to the caller, for example, as an audio message.
(Gilmore i-f 52). In other words, the result of "processing all of the DCG
commands in the voice script is a voice script in which all of the DCG
commands have been replaced by none, one, or more than one voice
instructions. DCG scripts, thereby, allow a voice developer to create voice
scripts that vary in content on-the-fly .... " (Gilmore i-f 61). Specifically,
replacing each dynamic content command includes "accessing a text block
from a file corresponding to the identifier parameter of the DCG command .
. . . This block of text is 'spoken' by the TTS engine of the gatev,ray 208
when the gateway 208 is unable to access a prompt file corresponding to the
URL specified by the prompt instruction." (Gilmore i-f 70). Accordingly, we
find Gilmore teaches dynamic generation of a voice script comprised of
variable blocks of text specified by dynamic content generation commands
that can be read to a caller through the use of a TTS (text-to-speech) engine.
Thus, we find Gilmore meets the claim 1 limitation "dynamically generates
text for at least a first user prompt during execution of the voice application"
because the text content of Gilmore's voice script is dynamically generated.
We further find Ju discloses the claim 1 limitation "in response to the
determining [that recorded audio corresponding to the text of the first user
prompt is not available], storing the text of the first user prompt in a set of
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Appeal2014-002405
Application 13/360,418
prompt texts for which recorded audio is to be recorded." Specifically, Ju
discloses a voice-dialing system where the system confirms the name of an
intended call recipient by prompting the caller with "initial inquiry
statements (e.g., 'Who would you like to contact?'), confirming statements
(e.g., 'Did you say the name ?' or 'I think you said ,
is that right?'), etc." (Ju i-f 32). Ju' s system can use voice talent recordings or
TTS to provide a caller with the audio response of the call recipient's name,
but further "accomplishes the use of personal audio recordings to improve
name confirmation" (Ju i-f 35). Accordingly, "the personal recording
database 230 is automatically re-built every night, or at other predetermined
times or frequencies (e.g., once a week, etc[.]) form the personal recordings
collected/updated from a collection/update module or component 250" (Id.).
Further:
[T]he voice-dialing system keeps track of which potential
recipients have personal recordings. One method of keeping
track of this information is to embed the personal recording
availability in the CFG [context-free grammar]. In order for the
confirmation module 240 to efficiently decide whether a personal
recording is available without posting back to the web server
database 230, the nightly built grammar CFG 212 returns not
only the ID and full text of the recognized names, but also
information or data indicative of whether each recipient has a
personal recording available.
(Ju i-f 37). During operation of the voice-dialing system,
[F]or the case where a personal recording is not available ... the
confirmation module 240 can use a statement such as "Did you
say ?", or "I think you said , is that
right?", or "I think you want , is that right?" In these
example statements, since a personal recording cannot be used,
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Appeal2014-002405
Application 13/360,418
the statements can be generated using voice talent recordings,
TTS generation, or a combination of the two.
(Ju ii 40).
In view of the foregoing, we find Ju teaches collecting and storing
personal recordings of call recipients in a database and tracking which call
recipients do not have personal recordings by embedding in the CFG the
"full text of the recognized names, but also information or data indicative of
whether each recipient has a personal recording available" (Ju ii 37). Thus,
we find Ju's CFG meets the claim I limitation "storing the text of the first
user prompt in a set of prompt texts for which recorded audio is to be
recorded" because Ju suggests those names without personal recordings are
intended to be recorded with personal audio by disclosing "the use of
personal audio recordings to improve name confirmation" and a module 250
which collects personal recordings and periodically updates personal
recording database 230 (Ju ii 35). We further find this "storing" is "in
response to the determining [that recorded audio corresponding to the text of
the first user prompt is not available]" because one of ordinary skill in the art
would understand that in the case that a personal recording is not available
for a certain name (see Ju ii 40), the CFG would subsequently be rebuilt with
the text of the name and data indicating no personal recording is available
(see Ju ii 37).
We are thus not persuaded by Appellants' arguments that the
combination of Gilmore and Ju fails to disclose the disputed limitations (see
Br. 11-13). We are also not persuaded by Appellants' argument that the
Examiner failed to provide a motivation to combine the references and failed
to show how they would be combined (see Br. 10). We agree with the
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Appeal2014-002405
Application 13/360,418
Examiner that both Gilmore and Ju relate to interactive voice systems, and
that Ju suggests improving interactive voice systems by using collected
personal audio recordings when available (Final Act. 11; Ans. 18). That is,
in certain situations such as voice-dialing a call recipient, personal audio
recordings are preferential to voice talent recordings or TTS generation (see
Ju 34--41 ). Further, one of ordinary skill in the art would recognize the
references would be combined by adding Ju's personal recording database
and CFG to Gilmore in order to store the personal recordings and track
names or other text for which there are no personal recordings. Moreover,
we note that "if a technique has been used to improve one device, and a
person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve
similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious unless its
actual application is beyond his or her skill." KSR Int'! Co. v. Teleflex Inc.,
550 U.S. 398, 417 (2007). Appellants have not shown applying Ju's
technique of storing and tracking personal recordings for use in an
interactive voice system to Gilmore's system would have been beyond the
level of ordinary skill in the art.
We are, therefore, not persuaded that the Examiner erred in rejecting
claim 1, and claims 16 and 18-35 not specifically argued separately.
CONCLUSION
The Examiner did not err in rejecting claims 1, 16, and 18-35 under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a).
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Appeal2014-002405
Application 13/360,418
DECISION
For the above reasons, the Examiner's rejection of claims 1, 16, and
18-35 is affirmed.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l )(iv).
AFFIRMED
kis
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