PTAB

IPR2015-00637

CaptionCall LLC v. Ultratec Inc

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Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: System for Text Assisted Telephony
  • Brief Description: The ’838 patent describes a "two-line" captioned telephone system for an assisted user. The system establishes a voice call with a hearing person on a first line and uses a second line to connect to a remote relay service for voice-to-text transcription, with the resulting text displayed to the assisted user.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Claims 1-9, 11-17, 19-25, and 27-29 are obvious over Liebermann in view of Engelke ’405 and Mukherji.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Liebermann (Patent 5,982,853), Engelke ’405 (Patent 5,724,405), and Mukherji (Patent 7,117,152).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Liebermann disclosed the core two-line architecture, comprising a first telephone line for a voice call and a second dedicated line to a voice-to-text translation "center." Engelke ’405 was cited for teaching the provision of both voice and text to assist hard-of-hearing users (not just deaf users) and for disclosing an "on/off" switch to control the captioning feature. Finally, Mukherji was alleged to disclose a system where a user could initiate text assistance mid-conversation via a user-operable button to compensate for poor call quality. Petitioner contended this combination taught all limitations of the independent claims, including an "activator" that could be used either before or during a call to invoke captioning.
    • Motivation to Combine: A Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSITA) would combine Liebermann's two-line system with the features of Engelke ’405 to create a more versatile device suitable for users with varying degrees of hearing impairment, not just those who are profoundly deaf. A POSITA would then be motivated to incorporate Mukherji's teaching of mid-call activation to improve the combined device. This was presented as a predictable application of a known technique (on-demand assistance) to improve a similar device (a captioned telephone), yielding predictable results.
    • Expectation of Success: Petitioner argued that a POSITA would have a reasonable expectation of success because there are a limited, finite number of possibilities for when to initiate text assistance (e.g., before the call, during the call, or not at all). The underlying two-line architecture was already in place, making the implementation of a user-selectable timing control a straightforward and predictable modification.

Ground 2: Claims 10, 18, 26, and 30 are obvious over Liebermann in view of Engelke ’405, Mukherji, and Engelke ’482.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Liebermann (Patent 5,982,853), Engelke ’405 (Patent 5,724,405), Mukherji (Patent 7,117,152), and Engelke ’482 (Patent 5,909,482).

  • Core Argument for this Ground:

    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground built upon the combination in Ground 1 to address dependent claims reciting transcription "correction" and "revoicing." Petitioner asserted that Engelke ’482 taught a relay system where a call assistant does not type, but instead "re-voices" the hearing person's words into voice recognition software trained to the assistant's voice. Engelke ’482 further disclosed that the call assistant could review and correct the transcribed text on a display before it was transmitted to the end user.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would have been motivated to add the revoicing and error correction techniques from Engelke ’482 to the primary combination from Ground 1 to improve the overall speed and accuracy of the transcription service. Revoicing is faster than manual typing, and providing a mechanism for correction improves the quality of the final text. This was characterized as a known technique to improve the performance of a similar relay system.
    • Expectation of Success: Integrating known voice recognition software and adding an error-correction step into an existing transcription workflow were argued to be predictable improvements with a high expectation of success for a POSITA.

  • Additional Grounds: Petitioner asserted additional obviousness challenges (Grounds 3 and 4) that mirrored Grounds 1 and 2, respectively, but substituted McLaughlin (Patent 6,181,736) for Liebermann. Petitioner argued McLaughlin taught a similar two-line telephony architecture, making the same combination rationales and motivations directly applicable.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • Petitioner argued for adopting constructions from prior Board decisions involving a parent patent (the ’835 patent). The central dispute concerned the "control limitation," which involves an "activator" operated by the user "while... conversing" to "initiate a captioning service."
  • Petitioner asserted this limitation should be understood as comprising distinct timing, context, and action elements. It argued that while the ’838 patent explicitly claimed these elements, the prior art already taught the functionality, and the claims merely recited the predictable result of combining known elements.
  • For claim 21, Petitioner proposed that the phrase "third communication link separate from the first and second" should be construed broadly as any distinguishable communication path, session, or protocol, consistent with systems that use separate streams for voice and text over a single IP connection.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1-30 of Patent 8,908,838 as unpatentable.