Amazon.com Inc v. VB Assets LLC

1. Case Identification

• Case #: IPR2020-01346
• Patent #: 9,015,049
• Filed: July 23, 2020
• Petitioner(s): Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates
• Patent Owner(s): VB Assets, LLC
• Challenged Claims: 1-20

2. Patent Overview

• Title: System and Method for a Cooperative Conversational Voice User Interface
• Brief Description: The ’049 patent discloses a conversational voice user interface that processes natural language utterances. The system uses "short-term knowledge" from the current conversation and "long-term knowledge" from prior user interactions to determine context, interpret the user's intent, and generate an appropriate response.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Kennewick - Claims 1-6, 10-16, and 20 are obvious over Kennewick alone or in view of the knowledge of a POSITA.

• Prior Art Relied Upon: Kennewick (Application # 2004/0193420).
• Core Argument for this Ground:
  • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that the single reference of Kennewick discloses all limitations of the challenged independent claims. Kennewick describes a speech-based information query system that uses a "dialog history" to interpret questions, which Petitioner contended corresponds directly to the ’049 patent’s claimed "first model that includes short-term knowledge." Petitioner further argued that Kennewick’s system creates and uses extensive, automatically updated "user profiles" that include "session histories" and a "history of questions asked," which directly maps to the claimed "second model that includes long-term knowledge." Petitioner asserted that Kennewick explicitly teaches using both the dialog history (short-term knowledge) and the user profile (long-term knowledge) to determine context for an utterance, interpret it, and generate a natural language response, thereby rendering the core concepts of claims 1 and 11 obvious.
  • Motivation to Combine (for §103 grounds): This ground is based on a single reference.
  • Expectation of Success (for §103 grounds): This ground is based on a single reference.

Ground 2: Obviousness over Kennewick and Cooper - Claims 7-9 and 17-19 are obvious over Kennewick in view of Cooper.

• Prior Art Relied Upon: Kennewick (Application # 2004/0193420) and Cooper (Patent 6,757,362).
• Core Argument for this Ground:
  • Prior Art Mapping: This ground focused on dependent claims requiring the system to identify and respond to the "manner" in which an utterance is spoken. Petitioner argued that Cooper teaches a virtual assistant that adapts its behavior based on the user's manner of speech. Specifically, Cooper’s system identifies polite discourse (e.g., use of words like "please" or "thank you") or the user's emotional state (e.g., "calm or angry") based on word choice, voice volume, and speech rate. Cooper then generates a response appropriate to that identified manner, such as by including polite or submissive words in its output. Petitioner contended that adding Cooper’s teachings for identifying and adapting to user mannerisms onto Kennewick’s foundational conversational system would render the dependent claims obvious. Cooper also discloses saving information about a user's emotional state for "use in future sessions," satisfying limitations requiring the use of long-term knowledge to identify the user's manner.
  • Motivation to Combine (for §103 grounds): A POSITA would combine Cooper with Kennewick to improve the "naturalness" and "personality" of Kennewick's conversational system, a stated goal of the Kennewick reference. Kennewick’s disclosure of using "dynamically invokeable personalities" to make responses seem more natural would have motivated a POSITA to look for concrete, known methods for achieving this, such as those in Cooper for adapting to a user's politeness or emotional state.
  • Expectation of Success: Petitioner argued that a POSITA would have a reasonable expectation of success in combining the references. The integration involved applying Cooper's known user-adaptive techniques to Kennewick's established conversational framework, which was a predictable and straightforward design choice for improving user interaction.

4. Arguments Regarding Discretionary Denial

• Petitioner argued against discretionary denial under 35 U.S.C. §325(d). The core contention was that while the Kennewick reference was cited during the original prosecution of the ’049 patent, it was part of a large Information Disclosure Statement (IDS) that listed over 500 references. Petitioner asserted that the examiner never substantively reviewed, discussed, or relied upon Kennewick, and therefore the Board’s review would not be duplicative of the examiner's work.

5. Relief Requested

• Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1-20 of Patent 9,015,049 as unpatentable.