PTAB

IPR2020-01381

Amazon.com Inc v. VB Assets LLC

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Petition
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1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: VOICE COMMERCE
  • Brief Description: The ’703 patent discloses a method and system for conducting "voice commerce." The technology involves receiving a natural language utterance from a user, using a speech recognition engine to identify a product or service, determining context, and automatically completing a purchase transaction by obtaining payment and shipping information without requiring further user input after the initial utterance.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Cohen, Hao, and Kennewick-II

Claims 1-4, 6, 8-9, 15-18, and 20 are obvious over Cohen in view of Hao and Kennewick-II.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Cohen (Patent 6,859,776), Hao (Patent 8,078,502), and Kennewick-II (Application # 20040193420).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that the combination of references taught every limitation of the challenged claims. Cohen disclosed a voice-activated browser system that allows users to make purchases (e.g., airline tickets, rental cars) via spoken dialog with speech-enabled web pages. Hao taught a system for populating an e-commerce shopping cart based on a single, free-form natural language voice input, which could also specify payment ("charged to my credit card") and shipping ("sent to my home") details retrieved from a user profile. Kennewick-II disclosed a mobile speech interface that makes significant use of context and user profile data to interpret natural language commands, using a scoring system to determine the most likely context. Petitioner asserted that these references collectively disclosed receiving a natural language utterance, processing it with a speech recognition engine, determining context, and identifying a product to complete a purchase using pre-stored payment and shipping information without further user input, as claimed in independent claims 1 and 15.
    • Motivation to Combine: Petitioner contended a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) would combine these references as they all address the same field of speech-based e-commerce. A POSITA would be motivated to integrate Hao's efficient single-utterance transaction processing and Kennewick-II's advanced context determination into Cohen's foundational voice browser system to create a more robust, streamlined, and user-friendly voice commerce experience.
    • Expectation of Success: The combination involved applying known technologies for their intended purposes, making the successful integration of these systems predictable.

Ground 2: Obviousness over Cohen, Hao, and Kennewick-II, further in view of Partovi

Claims 5, 19, and 25-29 are obvious over the combination of Cohen, Hao, and Kennewick-II, further in view of Partovi.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Cohen (Patent 6,859,776), Hao (Patent 8,078,502), Kennewick-II (Application # 20040193420), and Partovi (Patent 7,376,586).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground built upon the base combination of Ground 1, adding Partovi to teach limitations in claims 5, 19, and 25-29. Partovi disclosed a voice portal for e-commerce that teaches selecting a seller based on user preferences stored in a user profile (e.g., preferring Southwest Airlines for flights), which Petitioner mapped to the limitations of claims 5 and 19 concerning selecting from a predetermined set of user-specified sellers. Furthermore, Partovi disclosed prompting a user to confirm payment and shipping information before finalizing a purchase. Petitioner mapped this teaching to the limitations of claims 25-29, which recite providing a request for user confirmation to use payment and shipping information.
    • Motivation to Combine: Petitioner argued a POSITA would have been motivated to add Partovi's teachings to the base combination to improve the system's functionality and user experience. Incorporating user-specified seller preferences from Partovi into the Cohen/Hao system would be a logical step to personalize the service. Similarly, adding a confirmation step, as taught by Partovi, represented a simple design choice to prevent erroneous transactions, an obvious improvement for any automated purchasing system.
    • Expectation of Success: Integrating a preferred seller list and a confirmation prompt into an existing voice e-commerce framework were argued to be straightforward implementations of known options with a high expectation of success.

4. Arguments Regarding Discretionary Denial

  • Petitioner argued that the Board should not exercise its discretion to deny institution under 35 U.S.C. §314(a) or §325(d). It was contended that Kennewick-II, while cited in an Information Disclosure Statement (IDS) during the patent's prosecution, was part of a list containing over 700 references and was not substantively applied or considered by the examiner. Petitioner further argued that the parallel district court litigation involved different claims (primarily claim 30) than those challenged in the petition, and thus denial would undermine the AIA's objective of providing an effective alternative to district court litigation for the challenged claims.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requested the institution of an inter partes review and the cancellation of claims 1-6, 8-9, 15-20, and 25-29 of the ’703 patent as unpatentable.