Ubisoft, EA, Disney Interactive and SCEA have been named in a lawsuit alleging infringement of a voice recognition technology
Texas-based Bareis Technologies, LLC filed the suit on November 10, alleging that the various publishers violated its patent “Optical Disk Having Speech Recognition Templates for Information Access" filed in the mid-1990s.
The patent filing states, "The present invention overcomes the disadvantages and inefficiencies associated with using existing CD-ROM or other optical disk technologies by allowing for a more efficient user interface for system control. The preferred user interface is accomplished by integrating automatic speech recognition technologies into optical disk players for command and control purposes. The use of automatic speech recognition technologies in conjunction with optical disks provides an information or data storage medium capable of supplying reference templates for speech to enable users to access specific disks and/or disk information by speaking associated words, titles, or the like. The present invention provides for an optical disk capable of automatic speech recognition command and control that can present or output previously stored information for the purpose of indicating user selections."
The games named in the complaint include a host of titles in Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy series as well as SCEA’s SoCom: U.S. Navy SEALs, SoCom II: U.S. Navy SEALs, SoCom III: U.S. Navy SEALs, SoCom Combined Assault, EA’s NASCAR 06 and NASCAR 07 and Disney’s Phonics Quest.
The plaintiff is seeking damages and royalties. Thanks to GamePolitics.
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I don't see how that patent has been infringed at all? It clearly seems to be describing some sort of disc player whereby one can select discs or tracks by voice commands. It's actually quite a cool idea... I'd love to be able to yell "foo fighters" at my stereo and have it play their tracks. But anyway how on earth does this patent relate to the above mentioned games?
Actually the patent is stipulating a system where-by the information being used for comparison is stored on the disk in a library and the user's voice is compared to it.
This is the system games like SOCOM have used to issue instructions to units.
However the patent is perhaps unenforceable as the time frames may not match up. There is only a certain amount of time in which you can bring such cases.
