PTAB

IPR2025-01428

Apple Inc. v. MessageLoud, Inc.

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1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Systems for Hands-Free Listening to Messages
  • Brief Description: The ’728 patent discloses systems and methods that allow a user to listen to various types of messages (e.g., emails, text messages, messenger application messages) without manual interaction, particularly while engaged in activities like driving or exercising. The system automatically detects, queues, and reads messages aloud to the user.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Claims 1-25 are obvious over Boelter and Gruber.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Boelter (Application # 2014/0303842) and Gruber (Application # 2013/0275138).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Boelter disclosed the core concept of an in-vehicle system that automatically receives different message types (email, text) and places them in a chronological notification queue for display at a safe time, thereby reducing driver distraction. Boelter’s system analyzes message content to identify the sender and message type without user input. Petitioner contended that Gruber, which discloses a virtual assistant, supplied the missing “read aloud” functionality. Gruber’s assistant was designed for hands-free contexts like driving and could read lists of messages (emails, texts) aloud to a user, announce the sender, and parse messages into components like sender, subject, and body. Gruber also taught pausing after announcing a sender to allow a user time to provide an affirmative action (e.g., a gesture or voice command) to stop the message body from being read. If no action was taken, Gruber’s system would proceed to read the message body.
    • Motivation to Combine: A Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSITA) would combine Boelter’s message queuing system with Gruber’s read-aloud functionality to further Boelter's stated goal of minimizing driver distraction. Replacing Boelter's visual notification list with an audible one from Gruber was a predictable solution to the known problem of distracted driving, as it would reduce the need for a driver to look at a screen. The combination simply applied a known technique (text-to-speech for messages) to a known system (in-vehicle notification management) to improve safety.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have a reasonable expectation of success because virtual assistants and text-to-speech technology were well-known and commercially available. Integrating Gruber's audio features into Boelter's system would have required only routine software modifications, not the invention of new technology, as the underlying hardware (processor, memory, speakers) was already present in Boelter's disclosed smartphone or in-vehicle systems.

Ground 2: Claims 1-25 are obvious over Boelter, Gruber, and Polak.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Boelter (Application # 2014/0303842), Gruber (Application # 2013/0275138), and Polak (Application # 2015/0350400).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground was presented as an alternative to Ground 1, adding Polak as further evidence of obviousness. Petitioner asserted that Polak, like Gruber, taught a system for enabling drivers to hear messages vocally without touching their phone, thereby improving safety. Polak explicitly disclosed that upon a message’s arrival, sender details (name/phone number) could be "sounded to the user first" automatically and without any user input. This was argued to reinforce the teachings in Gruber regarding the automatic audible notification of incoming messages.
    • Motivation to Combine: The motivation for adding Polak's teachings was the same as for Gruber: to enhance the safety of Boelter’s system by reducing visual distraction. Petitioner argued Polak provided additional, explicit support for the idea of automatically reading sender details aloud upon receipt, which would remove a decision-making step for the user and further streamline the hands-free experience.
    • Expectation of Success: The expectation of success was based on the same reasoning as in Ground 1. Polak’s system, like Gruber's, relied on conventional text-to-speech and mobile application technology that would have been straightforward for a POSITA to integrate with Boelter's notification management framework.

4. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1-25 of the ’728 patent as unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. §103.