Nuance-Vlingo: If you are not sued, you do not exi(s)t

Nuance is not only active to push speech based search to the iphone competing with the vlingo/Yahoo offering. Apparently, Nuance just filed a lawsuit against Vlingo for infringing one of their 1000 patents. Nuance and its predecessor (ScanSoft) has a long history of lawsuits which were in sync with their M&A and business strategy. In some cases, when competing on a large account or negotiating a good M&A price, Nuance used the lawsuit mechanism to get a better deal.

Just few examples from the past:


ScanSoft, ART could settle lawsuit with acquisition

"Peabody-based ScanSoft Inc. may settle a lawsuit by acquiring defendant ART Advanced Recognition Technologies Inc., according to an Israeli newspaper report.

The deal could amount to tens of millions of dollars, according to Globes Online, which attributed the report to a Hebrew newspaper called Yediot Ahronot."

ScanSoft files suit against Voice Signal

"Voice Signal Technologies Inc., a Woburn start-up that sells speech-recognition systems used in wireless phones, has been hit with a patent-infringement lawsuit by ScanSoft Inc., after Voice Signal refused to accept what executives yesterday called a lowball takeover bid from ScanSoft."

There is also the famous TellMe case.

I think it is a great feedback to Vlingo whose management includes are ex-Nuance employees. If you are not sued in this industry, you do not exi(s)t.

iPhone speech recognition

The iPhone is attracting many developers wishing to add its next cool application. Nuance recently introduced vsearch - a voice search application. Similar to Vlingo's recent application on the blackberry.


The official video from Nuance







I believe the following video demonstrate better the hands free aspect of search.




Is it a gimmick or will people actually use it? What happens when there are speech recognition mistakes? Are there such mistakes? I like much more the unofficial video demonstrating the yahoo/vlingo voice search.



If someone has some statistics on voice base search, I will be glad to receive it.