Hasta La Gadget!

It appears that Apple is not safe from the continual downpour of patent cases as this week the National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan is readied and filed an infringement case against Apple’s use of Siri on the iPhone and iPad. The patents in question here have to do with speech recognition which the plaintiffs suggest was filed by them in 2005 as a “Method and system for matching speech data.” This patent is available under patent number 7,707,032 in the United States.

This patent appears to cover a method and system used to connect actual speech with recognized patterns and samples, to put it simply. The assignee here is the National Cheng Kung University and the patent was granted in 2010 on the 27th of April. The filing took place back in the fourth quarter of 2005, and the University now notes that the patent specifically refers to devices such as smartphones or tablets which use said technology.

This group also has a patent granted in 2007 which covers simply a “Speech recognition system” that works to divide speech processing into 4 modules. These modules you may recognize: system control, autocorrelation and linear predictive coefficient, cepstrum, and DTW recognition. Each of these modules have also formed an IP component on their own, and the University is coming full force at Apple for what they feel they’re owed because of them.

The second patent in question here has the University noting that, “The ’496 Patent is generally directed to a complete speech recognition system having a training button and a recognition button.” It’s likely that Apple will contend that their technology was developed outside of the devices they’re now tied to, but we’re sure there’ll be a bit of contention on whether or not the iPhone and iPad actually fit within the bounds of the patents since they’re not made primarily for speech recognition.

We shall see! Check out the timeline below for more patent wars in the Apple universe and prepare yourself for more hot action as the Samsung case ramps up here in the USA!

[via Patently Apple]

Apple sued for Siri tech by Taiwan University is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

IF you were born before 1946 or after 1964, you are free to go. Kindly close the door on your way out. I need a private moment with my fellow baby boomers.

So. I imagine you’re all feeling a little unappreciated these days. We seem to have entered one of our periodic seasons of boomer-bashing. In rapid Op-Ed succession, we children of the postwar demographic bulge have been blamed for turning religion into an indulgent free-for-all, for giving elites a bad name and for making greed respectable, or at least acceptable. That’s just this month, and just on this page. And it’s not only conservatives beating us with the Woodstock whip. Kurt Andersen, a confessed liberal and one of our more prolific cultural omnivores, started the latest thumping July 4 with an argument that amoral self-gratification is just the flip side of social liberation: “Thanks to the ’60s, we are all shamelessly selfish.”

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The hubbub over the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s retracted tweet supporting “Meatless Mondays” continues.

Last week, Republican Iowa senator Chuck Grassley’s made a tongue-in-cheek promise to compensate for the recommendation by eating an extra helping of meat. PETA responded with a death pool, taking bets on how long it would take for Grassley to “succumb to heart disease, diabetes, cancer, or some other meat-related disease.”

On Monday, the Iowa lawmaker continued to show his defiance — this time, with his lunch order. Texas’ junior senator John Cornyn posted the below image to his office’s Facebook page. The accompanying text reads: “PHOTO: Cornyn, Grassley Celebrate ‘Meat Monday:'”

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More on Meatless Monday

Tom Cooper, a superintendent at the Buellton Union School District in Buellton, Calif., has stepped down after allegedly making sexist and insensitive remarks, the Santa Maria Times reports.

Lisa Restivo, a first-grade teacher at Oak Valley School, accused Cooper of sexually harassing a pregnant teacher, talking about “putting birth control in the staff lounge and water,” expressing “negative reactions towards pregnant employees,” demonstrating “sexism towards women” and having “inappropriate relationships,” the paper notes.

According to the Santa Maria Times, Cooper released a statement on July 13 that expressed the following:

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If you follow the space program at all, you probably know that NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory, known as Curiosity, is on its way to the red planet. Curiosity is scheduled to touch down on the surface of Mars at 1:31 AM EDT on Monday, August 6. NASA has announced that Curiosity has made what is expected to be its final flight path adjustment before landing early Monday morning inside Mars’ Gale Crater.

To make the trajectory change, thrusters on the laboratory landing vehicle were fired for 6 seconds. The 6 second burst changed the spot where Curiosity will hit the Martian atmosphere by 13 miles. NASA is aiming to set Curiosity down in an 48 square mile area next to Mount Sharp, which rises from the center of Gale Crater.

NASA hopes to study the 3-mile high mountain because it seems to be made from different layers of sediment. NASA hopes studying those layers of up close will help determine whether Mars has ever had the ability to support life.

[via Discovery]