Apple tries to patent Text-to-Speech
In our regular installment of crazy patent talk… Apple has just filed a patent application titled Multimedia data transfer for a personal communication device. A rather vague title that’s better described deeper into the document:
Recent developments in consumer electronics have included the introduction of portable personal communication devices such as cell phones, personal walkie-talkies, and the like. In some cases, it would be desirable for a user of one of these personal communication devices to be able to transmit to another user having a similar device, multimedia data over a voice channel connecting the two devices. Such a system would be especially helpful for those users having impaired vision where reading a text message, for example, is difficult.
It’s bad enough that people will be karaokeing with their iPhones… But they’ll also be broadcasting their Twitters…
Apple toon via DamnYouBanana
Tags: Apple, iPhone, Karaoke, Text-to-speech
If this patent is granted, vocally impaired people would be foreclosed on the use of their speech synthesizers with any voice telecommunication devices including phones.
I decoded the first three claims by using definitions, that were provided within the document and interpreted ‘multimedia data’ as ‘text message’, and ‘vocalizing’ as ‘text-to-speech conversion’. So, here’s just one possible interpretation of the claims.
1. A method to use a personal computer to convert textual input into speech and transmit the synthesized speech to somebody else’s telecommunication device (e.g., a telephone), and also to receive the transmitted synthesized speech by that device (e.g., the telephone);
2. Method in 1 supplemented with a method to input the text you want to convert into speech and to input the telephone number you want to call;
3. And finally, to listen to the transmitted synthesized speech on the recipient’s phone.
Note that claims 1 -3 exactly describe how speech synthesis programs like NextUp Talker are used to place phone calls.
In fact, the patent embraces millions of other possible uses of speech synthesizers with voice telecommunication devices including but not limited to landline, cellular, SIP, and Skype phones, RF transceivers, walkie-talkies, BT devices, etc.
Vocally impaired people have already been practicing methods described in claims 1 – 3 for years, which makes the grant of patent improper under 35 U.S.C. 102(a), let alone the fact that such a patent would unreasonably incapacitate speech disabled people from using speech synthesizers with essential voice telecommunication devices like telephone.
Computer aided conversion of text into audible human-sounding speech is assistive technology that emerged over two decades ago and has been widely used by vocally impaired people to communicate with others. You just input phrases you want to say and the speech synthesizer pronounces them aloud for you in a natural-sounding synthetic voice. Whether due to disease, surgery, or any other problem resulting in the loss of speech, computer speech synthesizers are helping impaired people regain an important part of their lives by enabling them to talk to others.
Whether users’ text input is being converted into audible speech by a software program like NextUp Talker or a hardware text-to-speech synthesizer like VOTRAX, the use of speech synthesis not only assists speech impaired users in face-to-face conversations but also allows them to place calls and talk to anybody they want to reach over phone or any other telecommunication device.
Such uses of speech synthesizers were a normal practice for years. But now things may change.
If that patent is granted, we won’t be able to use speech synthesizer to place even an emergency call without paying royalties to Apple Computer, Inc.
Perhaps, filing that patent application was just an overlook by Apple or the US Patent Office, but if nobody cares, we shall soon face a new type of economic discrimination against disabled people.
Uh, I don’t get it. Why do you think you’d have to pay Apple royalties? The only way you’d pay Apple royalties is by buying one of their products.
I think there’s some misunderstanding about what patents enable in the above comments. You can’t take away someone’s existing product by patenting it after the fact.
You can protect your product from being copied for a set time after you patent it. However, this would mean that you would also have to be in the position to sue the company copying your product. At any rate, you can’t collect royalties for someone else’s existing product with a new patent. That’d be weird.
Felix: [you wrote: ‘Why do you think you’d have to pay Apple royalties?’]
Apple is going to patent some new uses of some well known things. But some of these uses are not new, specifically, speech-disabled people have been using TTS synthesizers over phone for years.
If the patent is granted, companies doing new TTS-over-phone products for vocally-impaired people, will have to pay patent fees to Apple.
Such TTS companies should have to raise prices by those fees, unless they just love to trade at a loss. So, in the long run, it is the end user who will have to pay those fees. Am I wrong on that?
* * * * * * * * * *
Jobe Roberts: [you wrote: ‘You can’t take away someone’s existing product by patenting it after the fact.’]
It really depends. While driving a heavy tank, one may forget about the rules of the road.
Apple registered iPhone without heed to the fact that that trademark has been held by Cisco since 2000.
Does US Trademark & Patent Office care about things like ‘vocalizing multimedia data’ actually means ‘text-to-speech conversion’? I doubt that. It is Apple who cares about such interpretation, and we shall learn that as soon as the patent is granted. So, there’s not much of a chance to protest the patent, the more so as now that the application is published, you’d need Apple’s consent to file the protest.
Still, according to prnewswire.com, more than 5,000,000 people suffer from speech disabilities and more than 500,000 people annually suffer from stroke or other medical conditions that leave them unable to verbally communicate with others.
For many of them, TTS-over-phone is the only channel they are using to communicate with the outer world.
And this communication channel is now going to be re-invented and covered by Apple’s patent.
Trademarks and patents are different things. I’ve never heard of a company successfully collecting royalties on someone else’s existing product because they have a new patent. Please point out such an example if you know of one.
Garbage patents like Amazon’s one-click patent do get patented, but that’s a fault with the current patent system. Amazon hasn’t had much success charging royalties for it.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/03/08/amazon_settles_1click_patent_dispute/
But you certainly have a point that there are such things that should not be patented and owned by a single company if they are going to impede the inclusion of the technology in other products. But would the patent do that? I’m not sure, please elaborate if you can.
You’d think perhaps the human genome for instance would be such an example..
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/patents.shtml
The patent already exist, and it is owned by Baxter Technologies and Calypso Wireless Inc. Voice2Text and Text2Voice are two of over 20 patents in their portfolio.