Newsgroups: comp.speech
Path: pavo.csi.cam.ac.uk!pipex!uunet!world!srctran
From: srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian)
Subject: Speech software patents from 1992/93
Message-ID: <CJ36uE.GIE@world.std.com>
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Tue, 4 Jan 1994 03:54:13 GMT
Lines: 194


                         TITLES TO 2700 SOFTWARE PATENTS
                             ISSUED IN 1992 and 1993

                                 Greg Aharonian
                          Internet Patent News Service
                         P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178
                             patents@world.std.com
                                  617-489-3727

    In January and February, the Patent Office is holding hearings in San Jose
and Washington on the "problem" of software patents.  The hearings will focus
on two aspects: the nature of software patents (legal, economic and software
theory), and the process of awarding software patents (in particular, software
prior art).  To help these hearings be more empirical, I have prepared a list
of 2700 software patents issued in the past two years.  It should help people
base assertions in the actual statistics of issued software patents (of which
there are over 11,000).

     The patents listed below were issued in all of 1992 and the first half of
1993.  The list is based on what I consider to be a software patent, though it
does reflect the nature of software patenting in the US, and does include
software patents from all categories of software for which patents are being
sought.  And given the Patent Office's classification scheme for software
(which they are revising), this was not a very easy list to compile.

     Despite the tremendous numbers of software patents being issued (with
respect to the small numbers of true software innovations each year), software
patenting as of yet is not a really big socioeconomic problem, though unless
the software community acts now, it will become a big problem.

     A series of diskettes with more detailed information on each software
patent listed below (full title, number, assignee, abstract, classification,
application date) are available for $595.  Also provided are diskettes with
9000 titles from my software prior art database, and version 1.0 of my patents
claim analysis program.  Proceeds go to my project of making the Patent Office
APS patent text files Internet accessible.

     For more information on the Internet Patent News Service, send  'help'
in the body of a message to   patents@world.std.com   on the Internet.

==============================================================================

     I use 42 categories of software patents, listed below, though a few are
so big that I will probably split them up.  Some patents are listed in more
than one category to simplify your search for relevant patents.  Many of the
titles have been abridged without losing their meaning, to fit on one line.
Some titles start with '--'.  This indicates the assignee is IBM.  I do this
because IBM has 1/8 of all software patents, has made money off its software
patents, and it is interesting to see their software patenting strategy.


                        IMAGE PROCESSING
                        OPERATING SYSTEMS
                        NETWORKING and COMMUNICATIONS
                        PROCESS CONTROL and NUMERICAL CONTROL
                        GRAPHICS
                        GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACES
                        DATABASE
                        WORD PROCESSING and DOCUMENT HANDLING
                        FINANCIAL
                        COMPUTER AIDED SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
                        ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE and EXPERT SYSTEMS
                        ENGINEERING
                        CIRCUIT DESIGN / COMPUTER AIDED ENGINEERING
                        NEURAL NETWORKS
                        SECURITY AND ENCRYPTION
                        MULTIPROCESSING
                        PATTERN RECOGNITION
                        MEDICAL AND HEALTH
                        SIGNAL PROCESSING
                        SPEECH RECOGNITION and SYNTHESIS
                        COMPRESSION
                        NUMERICAL ANALYSIS
                        COMPUTER AIDED DESIGN
                        AUTOMOBILE
                        OFFICE AUTOMATION
                        GEOPHYSICAL
                        NATURAL LANGUAGE ANALYSIS
                        CHARACTER RECOGNITION
                        PARALLEL PROCESSING
                        BIOLOGY
                        VISION
                        DISTRIBUTED PROCESSING
                        ALGORITHMS and DATA STRUCTURES
                        OBJECT ORIENTED PROGRAMMING
                        ROBOTICS
                        FUZZY LOGIC
                        SIMULATION
                        EDUCATION
                        PHYSICS
                        CHEMISTRY
                        SPREADSHEETS
                        VIRTUAL REALITY

   What follows are the speech patents.  The full list is being posted to
comp.software-eng, misc.legal.computing, misc.int-property.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

			SPEECH RECOGNITION and SYNTHESIS

Inspection control system and method
Method for recognizing N different word strings in a speech signal
Processing a speech signal with estimated pitch
Methods for speech quantization and error correction
Grammar-based checksum constraints for speech recognition
--Speech recognition using a speech coder outputting acoustic prototype ranks
Speech synthesis apparatus and method
Extracting a speech signal from a noisy speech signal
Method of speech recognition
Keyword recognition using template concantenation model
Voiced/unvoiced estimation of an acoustic signal
Time scale modification of speech signals
Real-time interactive conversational toy
Machine-based learning system
Providing sentence-final accents in synthesized American English speech
Voice recognition of proper names using text-derived recognition models
Speech recognition based on subsyllable spellings
Encoding method for syllables
Text-to-speech synthesizer with formant-rule/speech-parameter synthesis modes
Vector quantization method employing mirrored input vectors to search codebook
Large-vocabulary continuous speech prefiltering and processing system
Phoneme discrimination method
Distinguishing or counting spoken itemized expressions
Wordspotting for voice editing and indexing
Distinguishing between voiced and unvoiced speech elements
Speech coder having spectral interpolation and fast codebook search
--Grouping utterances of a phoneme into context-dependent categories
Training module for estimating mixture Gaussian densities for speech-unit
    models in speech recognition systems
Pattern matching system for speech recognition system
Voice interactive computer system
Language and speaker recognition
--Speaker-independent label coding apparatus
Automation of telephone operator assistance calls
Digital dictation system
Harmonic speech coding where a set of parameters for a continuous magnitude
    spectrum is determined by a speech analyzer
Speech recognition using neural network and fuzzy logic
Integrated voice messaging / voice response system
Automobile navigation system using real time spoken driving instructions
Method of speaker adaptive speech recognition
Temporal decorrelation method for robust speaker verification
Speaker recognition in a telephone switching system
Speech synthesis using perceptual linear prediction parameters
--Feneme-cased Markov models for words
Recognizing spoken words by feature extraction/comparison with reference words
Pitch control in artifical speech
Speech word recognizing apparatus using information indicative of the
    relative significance of speech features
Generating speech from digitally stored coarticulated speech segments
Utilizing formant frequencies in speech recognition
Speech recognition apparatus including speaker-independent dictionary
Reducing the search complexity in analysis-by-synthesis coding
Speech recognition apparatus of speaker adaptation type
Vocabulary partitioned speech recognition apparatus
Speech recognition system utilizing both a long-term strategic and short-term
    scoring operation in a transition network thereof
Speech recognition wherein decisions are made based on phonemes
Voice recognition method by analyzing syllables
Speech recognition having dynamic reference pattern adaptation
Recognizing alphanumeric strings spoken over a telephone network
Speech recognition
AI pattern-recognition-based noise reduction system for speech processing
Rejection method for speech recognition
Identification of voice patterns
The recognition of voice signal encoded as time encoded speech
Speech recognition method and apparatus
Facsimile-to-speech system
Continuous speech recognition apparatus
Phase synthesis for speech processing

==============================================================================

              WHERE TO SEND YOUR COMMENTS ABOUT SOFTWARE PATENTS


     Those interested in presenting written comments on the topics presented
in the supplementary information, or any other related topics, should address
their comments to the Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks, marked to the
attention of Jeff Kushan.  Comments submitted by mail should be sent to
Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks, Box 4, Patent and Trademark Office,
Washington, DC 20231.

     Comments may also be submitted by telefax at (703) 305-8885 and by
electronic mail through the Internet to comments-software@uspto.gov.  Written
comments should include the following information: - name and affiliation of
the individual responding; - an indication of whether comments offered
represent views of the individual's organization or are the respondent's
personal views; and - if applicable, the nature of the respondent's
organization, including the size, type of organization (e.g., business, trade
group, university, non-profit organization) and principal areas of business
or software development activity.
