We’ve noticed a few more press releases than normal that mention the granting of voice processing patents. Most recently, Advanced Voice Recognition Systems (AVRS) announced that it has been granted its second significant patent in the area of speech recognition and transcription. The company says that its first patent, U.S. Patent #5,960,447, was granted in September 1999. It carried the title “Word Tagging and Editing System for Speech Recognition.” The second patent, which was disclosed this month, addresses speech recognition and transcription “among users having heterogeneous protocols.”

We are neither lawyers nor patent experts but given that many of the commercial transcription services use a combination of speech processing and live agent intervention, this second patent is potentially very broad. In what could be construed as a threat to step up enforcement. Walter Geldenhuys, AVRS CEO and President, said that he believes the second patent “will enhance licensing and marketing opportunities.”

In a separate, and unrelated development, speech analytics specialist Utopy has been granted U.S. Patent #7,487,094 titled “System and method of call classification with context modeling based on composite words.” In this case, a company spokesperson told us that it is definitely “not an offensive patent.” Instead they see it as formal recognition of the fact that, in contrast to other speech analytics vendors, who take either a phoneme-based approach or resort to speech-to-text conversion before carrying out pattern recognition, Utopy’s methods are, indeed, unique.

It’s really a mouthful, but company co-founder Yochai Konig characterizes Utopy’s approach as “phrase-based contextual speech recognition-cum-understanding.” It provides the foundation for understanding live or recorded utterances in a single pass with both accuracy and completeness of understanding. It is an important component in business intelligence solutions that seek to link contact center and IVR performance with key business objectives. Utopy markets its solutions as premises-based, hosted or on-demand solutions.

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