PTAB

IPR2019-00800

Nuance Communications Inc v. MModal Services Ltd

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Key Events
Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Verification of extracted data
  • Brief Description: The ’040 patent discloses a computer-implemented method for verifying the accuracy of concepts extracted from documents, such as medical speech transcripts. The system identifies a document with coded information, where a "feature" of the coding encodes a specific concept (e.g., an allergy). It then renders text associated with that concept with a visual characteristic (e.g., boldface) to allow a user to verify the underlying coding without viewing the code itself, and subsequently allows for modification of the coding if it is found to be inaccurate.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Claims 1, 2, 6, 7, 11, 20-22, and 24 are obvious over Boone in view of Friedman.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Boone (Application # 2004/0243614) and Friedman (Patent 6,182,029).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that the combination of Boone and Friedman rendered the challenged claims obvious under 35 U.S.C. §103. Boone was asserted to disclose a computer-implemented system for automatically extracting and validating medical concepts from electronic documents. Boone’s validation client module displays a medical report in a "record viewer" and uses "font effects" like highlighting or underlining to distinguish text related to an extracted concept. A user can then validate the accuracy of these extractions via a graphical user interface (GUI) with checkboxes. Petitioner contended, however, that Boone does not explicitly teach that the visual effect is rendered based on a feature of the underlying coding (e.g., using different visual effects for different types of concepts like allergies versus medications).
    • Friedman was argued to supply this missing limitation. Friedman describes the "MedLEE" system, which extracts clinical information and encodes it in a structured XML format. To facilitate manual review, Friedman teaches that a browser can display and highlight the extracted information. Critically, Friedman discloses that "different types of information can be highlighted in different colors" based on their features to distinguish them, thereby facilitating a more accurate review. Petitioner argued that this color-coding, which is dependent on the type of information encoded (the "feature"), directly corresponds to the claimed step of rendering data with a visual characteristic "based on the first feature." For dependent claims, Petitioner argued that Friedman’s use of nested XML codings taught the claimed relationship between a first and second coding.
    • Motivation to Combine (for §103 grounds): Petitioner asserted that a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) would combine Boone and Friedman because they address analogous problems in the same technological field of processing and verifying medical reports. A POSITA implementing Boone's validation system would be motivated to incorporate Friedman's more advanced, feature-based highlighting to improve review efficiency. Friedman’s color-coding provides more intuitive visual cues, allowing a reviewer to immediately distinguish between a medication, an allergy, or a diagnosis by its color, rather than relying on a generic underline for all extracted terms. This would streamline the manual validation workflow that is central to Boone's purpose.
    • Expectation of Success (for §103 grounds): Petitioner argued a POSITA would have a reasonable expectation of success in making the combination. Both references describe systems that use or are compatible with well-known markup languages like XML. Integrating Friedman’s established XML-based color-coding and highlighting techniques into Boone's GUI-based validation system was presented as a straightforward application of known, compatible technologies that would yield the predictable result of an enhanced and more efficient user interface for data verification.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • Petitioner asserted that the claim 1 limitation "rendering, by a processor, the first data to have a visual characteristic that is based on the first feature" was central to the dispute and required construction.
  • Proposed Construction: "modifying a visual characteristic of the displayed text based on the feature of the underlying coding."
  • Importance: This proposed construction was critical to Petitioner's obviousness argument. It focused the inquiry on the direct link between a specific property of the code (the "feature," such as concept type) and the specific visual modification applied. Petitioner argued this interpretation was supported by the patent's specification and prosecution history and aligned with the key technical contribution supplied by Friedman—using different colors for different types of coded information—to render the claims obvious.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review (IPR) and cancellation of claims 1, 2, 6, 7, 11, 20-22, and 24 of the ’040 patent as unpatentable.