Patent decision

BL number

O/014/22

Concerning rights in

GB1714456.9

Hearing Officer

Mr H Jones

Decision date

7 January 2022

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Google LLC

Provisions discussed

Section 1(2)(c)

Keywords

Excluded fields (refused)

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The application relates to enhancing the functionality of computer-based dialogue systems, often included as user-interfaces for accessing, processing, managing and delivering information, e.g. in smart speakers. Existing dialogue systems may be very different in their capabilities - one dialogue system may be able to generate an e-mail but may not be configured to handle a request to make a hotel room booking, whereas another might be able to handle such booking requests but be unable to process a request to send an e-mail. Users may therefore wish to extend the functionality of the dialogue system with which they work. The invention allows for enhancement of the functionality of a dialogue system by targeting dialogue system extension elements to a user based on monitoring their natural language voice and text interaction to thereby provide a customised dialogue system engine which is better able to fulfil a user-™s request to perform a desired task.

The Hearing Officer agreed with applicant that inventions relating to speech recognition systems may be regarded as technical but found that the present invention was not concerned with improved disambiguation of a user-™s voice or text requests. Instead, the invention is concerned with recognising the limits of its existing functionality based on user requests and prompting the user to extend that functionality if necessary. The Hearing Officer considered the contribution made by the invention in the light of the five signposts set out in AT&T and concluded that the improvement lay in a computer program as such, and therefore excluded by section 1(2). The application was refused.

Full decisionO/014/22  213Kb