PTAB

IPR2013-00541

CaptionCall LLC v. Ultratec Inc

Log In
Key Events
Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Relay for Personal Interpreter
  • Brief Description: The ’482 patent discloses telephone relay services for communication between hearing-impaired and hearing individuals. The core inventive concept is a method where a human call assistant, instead of manually typing the hearing person's words, "re-voices" them into a voice recognition system that is specifically trained to the assistant's voice to generate a text transcript.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Anticipation of Claims 1 and 5 - Claims 1 and 5 are anticipated by Ryan under 35 U.S.C. §102.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Ryan (Patent 5,809,112).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Ryan disclosed every element of independent claims 1 and 5. Specifically, Ryan taught improving the accuracy of a relay service by having a relay agent "listen to the caller and repeat the voice message" into a terminal. This terminal used speech recognition software that was "specifically designed to recognize the voice of particular relay agents," directly teaching the key "re-voicing" limitation. Ryan further disclosed the other required elements, including transmitting the hearing person's voice to the agent, using a computer to convert the agent's re-voiced speech to a digital text stream, and transmitting that text stream over a telephone connection to the deaf person's telecommunication device (TDD).

Ground 2: Obviousness of Claims 1 and 5 - Claims 1 and 5 are obvious over Wycherley in view of Yamamoto under 35 U.S.C. §103.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Wycherley (Patent 5,163,081) and Yamamoto (a 1996 conference paper).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner asserted that Wycherley disclosed a relay service for the hearing impaired that sought to automate speech-to-text conversion using speaker-dependent voice recognition. However, Wycherley’s system required pre-trained voice templates of the hearing caller, making it impractical for calls with the general public. Yamamoto addressed a similar problem in the context of telephone operator assistance, teaching that when fully automated voice recognition was not yet practical, an operator could use a "preliminary step" of "repeating the question from the user" into a voice recognition system to increase efficiency.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would combine Yamamoto's intermediate re-voicing solution with Wycherley's relay system. Both references aimed to increase the efficiency of operator-assisted telephone services using voice recognition. A POSITA would have found it obvious to apply Yamamoto's re-voicing strategy to Wycherley's human attendant terminals for situations where full automation was not practical (e.g., when a caller had no pre-trained template), thereby recapturing the efficiency benefits of voice recognition.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have had a high expectation of success, as this combination involved applying a known solution (re-voicing for efficiency) to a known problem (impracticality of full automation) in a highly analogous field.

Ground 3: Obviousness of Claims 2, 7, and 8 - Claims 2, 7, and 8 are obvious over Ryan in view of Wycherley and Jones under §103.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Ryan (Patent 5,809,112), Wycherley (Patent 5,163,081), and Jones (WO 95/00946).

  • Core Argument for this Ground:

    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that the combination of Ryan and Wycherley taught the base relay system as recited in the independent claims. Dependent claim 2 and independent claim 7 add limitations related to a "noise canceling signal" or "noise attenuating means" to reduce the amount of the call assistant's own voice being heard in their earphone (a phenomenon known as sidetone). Jones disclosed active noise canceling headphones which used an external microphone to pick up undesired ambient noise and generate an opposing, destructive anti-noise signal. Petitioner contended this same microphone could pick up the assistant's own voice to cancel sidetone.
    • Motivation to Combine: Attenuating sidetone was a well-known technique for telephone operators to prevent them from lowering their speaking volume. The ’482 patent itself admitted that noise-canceling earphones were "commercially available." A POSITA would have been motivated to incorporate the known noise-canceling technology of Jones into the headset of a call assistant in the Ryan/Wycherley relay system to solve the known problem of sidetone and improve operator performance.
    • Expectation of Success: The combination represented a simple application of a known, commercially available technology (noise cancellation) to a known system (a telephone relay) to achieve a predictable and desired result (reduced sidetone).

  • Additional Grounds: Petitioner asserted 15 additional obviousness grounds. These grounds challenged the remaining claims (2-4, 6-15) using various combinations of the primary references (Ryan, Wycherley, Yamamoto, Ellozy) supplemented with other art to teach specific features, such as Choi for an audio switch, Vasile for a voice buffer, and Liebermann for a single-line communication architecture.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • "noise attenuating means" (claim 7): Petitioner argued this is a means-plus-function limitation under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. §112, ¶ 6. Based on the patent's specification, Petitioner asserted the corresponding structure required to perform the function is "[n]oise canceling earphones" and a "computer ... with noise canceling sound generation software," or equivalents thereof. This construction was central to the argument that the limitation was not novel, as the patent admitted such earphones were commercially available.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1-15 of the ’482 patent as unpatentable.