Microsoft gets awarded yet another excrement patent

Case in point - one of the revolting pieces of fecal patents just issued recently to Microsoft. It demonstrates yet again the contempt of large companies do to any prior art searching, the love of large companies to flood the PTO with crap applications to choke the system while whining about others who do the same [now known as Chandlerism], and once again, it demonstrates the PTO'S COMPLETE AND TOTAL MISMANAGEMENT OF PRIOR ART SEARCHING AND RESOURCES. When Jon Dudas told Congress that most, if not all, measures of quality at the PTO are their highest in 25 years, he deliberately LIED to Congress. Whoever is paying Dudas to wreck the PTO is getting their monies worth. The patent. The USPTO belched/oozed/barfed out U.S. patent 7,437,290 to Microsoft: Automatic censorship of audio data for broadcast U.S. Patent 7,437,290 MICROSOFT (filed October 2004, issued October 2008) Despicable claim language aside, this patent is a method for detecting undesired speech in broadcasts, censoring (deleting, bleeping) the undeisred speech and updating probability tables for the presence of the recognized speech. COMPLETELY UNINNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY. The claim is attached below. So how much tremendous amounts of prior art, with Bill Gates' billions to sustain decent prior art searching (NOT - a lesson well learned by its stepchild Intellectual Ventures) - how much prior art is associated with this patent? NEXT TO FREAKING NOTHING. The patent cites two prior patents, and one non-patent prior art published too late: 7,139,031 Automated language filter for TV receiver 6,337,947 Method and apparatus for customized editing of video and/or audio signals Seide et al, "Vocabulary-Independent Search in Spontaneous Speech", IEEE International Conference on ASSP, May 2004 Such pathetic prior art submissions should a priori be automatic proof of intent to deceive the Patent Office. Just how pathetic is this patent? Once again, let me do a 15-minute-Jon-Dudas-High-Quality-Patent-Bust. Thebust relies on five patents that were published by the time the examinershould have been doing ANY searching, four of which were published at the

time Microsoft filed they patent, had they wanted to do any searching: Publ. Date. Number Title ----- --------- --------------------------------------------------------- 1993 5,199,077 Wordspotting for voice editing and indexing 2004 6,829,582 Controlled access to audio signals based on objectionable audio content detected via sound recognition 2000 6,166,780 Automated language filter 1999 5,870,708 Method of and apparatus for scanning for and replacing words on video cassettes 1994 5,369,440 System and method for automatically controlling the audio output of a television So let's look at this prior art, which neither Microsoft nor the PTO did, to see how crappy Microsoft's patent is. The first patent, dating back to 1993 (eleven years before Microsoft filed) is a foundational patent on pattern recognition systems (in this case, Hidden Markov Models) to learn to recognize and delete segments of speech, which includes questionable segments of speech that are being broadcasted: _________________________________________________________________ United States Patent 5,199,077 Wordspotting for voice editing and indexing Abstract A technique for wordspotting based on hidden Markov models (HMM's). The technique allows a speaker to specify keywords dynamically and to train the associated HMM's via a single repetition of a keyword. Non-keyword speech is modeled using an HMM trained from a prerecorded sample of continuous speech. The wordspotter is intended for interactive applications, such as the editing of voice mail or mixed-media documents, and for keyword indexing in single-speaker audio or video recordings. From the SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION: An important application for the wordspotting system of the invention is not only indexing of recorded speech, but especially for interactive voice editing of recorded speech, such as voice mail, dictation, or audio documentation. Wordspotting can be employed by the user to enable editing operations by locating specific words in the recorded speech for deletion, substitution, or insertion. It will also ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ enable efficient and automatic means of indexing into long audio documents. The system, while restricted to a single speaker, or pairs of speakers is not restricted in vocabulary size. _________________________________________________________________ One application of this patent is to use the Hidden Markov Models on recorded speech THAT IS BROADCASTED, using the detections to delete specific words, i.e., Microsoft's patent. Almost complete anticipation, especially when obviously combined with the following patent: _________________________________________________________________ United States Patent 5,369,440 System and method for automatically controlling the audio output of a television Abstract A system and method for automatically controlling the audio output from a television so as to avoid listening to undesired material includes a microphone for converting the audio output from the television into audio signals, an audio amplifier for amplifying the audio signals from the microphone, a waveform pattern comparator, a waveform digitizer and recorder, a speech recognition unit, an external device controller, a computer and an input/output device. In setting up the system for subsequent use, waveform patterns of audio signals corresponding to material being outputted from the television which the listener considers undesirable are digitized by the waveform digitizer and recorder and then stored in the waveform pattern comparator. In addition, digital signals corresponding to key words in undesired material are entered into the computer through the input/output device and then transferred from the computer to the speech recognition unit. Once the system has been loaded with the undesired material, waveform pattern comparator continually digitizes and compares the audio signal output from the audio amplifier with the stored data. At the same time, the speech recognition unit compares the audio signal output with the stored key words. When the undesired material is detected an indicator signal is sent to the external device controller which outputs a control signal which is applied to the television to make some adjustment to either the sound or the channel to avoid listening to the undesired material. _________________________________________________________________ So two patents, published in 1993 and 1994, TEN YEARS BEFORE MICROSOFT FILED THEIR PIECE OF CRAP, completely anticipate Microsoft's supposed invention. Just to have fun, I found three more patents, also so much on point to be powerful prior art. _________________________________________________________________ United States Patent 6,166,780 Automated language filter Abstract A method and apparatus for analyzing the closed captioned aspect of a video signal for specific undesirable words or phrases and then muting the audio portion of those words or phrases while not affecting the video portion therein while simultaneously modifying the closed captioned signal in order to display only acceptable words or phrases. _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ United States Patent 6,829,582 Controlled access to audio signals based on objectionable audio content detected via sound recognition Abstract An apparatus, program product, and method restrict access to objectionable audio content in an audio or audio/video transmission using sound recognition. Sound recognition may be performed, for example, to detect and control access to objectionable non-spoken audio content, e.g., by detecting violent sounds such as screams, explosions, gun shots, sirens, punches, kicks and/or other non-spoken content such as sexually-suggestive sounds. In addition, occurrences of objectionable audio content detected in an audio transmission may be tracked so that access to the audio transmission may be controlled responsive to the identification of multiple occurrences of objectionable audio content. Furthermore, access control over detected objectionable audio content in an audio transmission may result in inhibition of access to a program associated with the audio transmission. _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ United States Patent 5,870,708 Method of and apparatus for scanning for and replacing words on video cassettes Abstract A scanning apparatus for scanning a video recording for objectionable content is disclosed that includes an audio processor for analyzing the recording and recognizing the objectionable audio, and audio control gate for manipulating the objectionable audio. The scanning apparatus also includes an amplifier that amplifies the signal and converters to convert the signal from analog to digital format prior to analysis and digital to analog format after analysis. The method of scanning the video recording for objectionable content includes the steps of analyzing the recording and manipulating the recording. The method first includes the steps of amplifying the recording signal, separating the audio portion of the recording from the composite recording, digitizing the portions of the recording, and storing the composite portion of the recording in a loop while analysis is performed on the audio portion of the recording. _________________________________________________________________ So five patents I found in 15 minutes completely invalidate Microsoft's crappily issued patent. And this doesn't rely on even more patents, and even much more non-patent prior art that is available, had anyone bother to do any searching (apparently a firable offense at Microsoft). 15 minutes neither Microsoft nor the PTO spent doing a similar search. Because to big companies like Microsoft, and big liars like Jon Dudas, patent quality is still a big freaking joke. So when con artists like IBM lie about the need for public peer review of patents, while remaining silent about the incompetence of PTO management with regards to prior art handling, it is just con artists cheating. And when liars like Jon Dudas chandleristically whine that the PTO needs more prior art, it is a big freaking lie because the PTO still is unable to make use of all of the patent prior art it has complete access to, let alone non-patent prior art. All of these people are liars, especially since it takes longer for them to write their liars about prior art that it does for me to find the prior art. ========== Automatic censorship of audio data for broadcast Microsoft U.S. Patent 7,437,290 1. A method for automatically censoring audio data, comprising the steps of: (a) automatically processing the audio data to detect any undesired speech that may be included therein, by comparison to undesired speech data, by performing the following steps; comparing words in the audio data against words comprising the undesired speech, to identify potential matches; dynamically varying a probability threshold dependent upon at least one criterion; and based upon a probability of a potential match and the probability threshold, determining whether any undesired speech is included in the audio data; (b) for each occurrence of undesired speech that is automatically detected, altering the undesired speech detected in the audio data, producing censored audio data in which the undesired speech is substantially no longer perceivable by a listening audience; and (c) dynamically adjusting the probability threshold based upon a frequency with which undesired speech by a specific speaker is detected in the audio data, so that as the occurrences of undesired speech that are detected increase, the probability threshold is reduced