Apple wrapped up in Siri patent suit
Apple’s famous voice assistant technology Siri is at the centre of another patent infringement lawsuit in the US.
Texas-based Portal Communications accused Apple of infringing three patents, at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, on Thursday, March 8.
The three patents, US numbers 7,376,645; 7,873,654; and 8,150,872, are all called “Multimodal natural language query system and architecture for processing voice and proximity-based queries”.
According to the claim, the patents were developed by inventor Dave Bernard and were assigned to Portal Communications.
“Software products existing before the priority date of the ‘645 patent … only allowed for limited voice-based user interaction with PCs, PDAs [personal digital assistants], and the like,” said the suit.
It added that these products allowed a user to perform voice-based functions and commands only after “time-consuming, and often inaccurate, imprecise, and unreliable, voice training”.
Siri is allegedly infringing the patents because the voice assistant can receive and process natural language queries and return the answers.
The Siri functionality is used in Apple’s iPhones, iPads, Watches and Mac computers.
Portal Communications is seeking triple damages and injunctive relief.
At the beginning of March, Siri found itself at the centre of another patent claim.
This time, Alphabet-owned Google was accused of infringing six patents relating to Siri, according to a lawsuit served by licensing company IPA Technologies.
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