IN THE
`
`UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
`BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
`_____________
`
`AMAZON WEB SERVICES, INC.
`AND AMAZON.COM SERVICES LLC,
`
`- vs. -
`
`ZENTIAN LIMITED
`
`_____________
`
`Patent No. 10,971,140
`
`Petitioners
`
`Patent Owner
`
`Issued: April 6, 2021
`Inventor: Mark Catchpole
`Title: SPEECH RECOGNITION CIRCUIT USING PARALLEL PROCESSORS
`
`Inter Partes Review No. IPR2023-01197
`
`DECLARATION OF LES ATLAS, PH.D. IN SUPPORT OF
`PETITION FOR INTER PARTES REVIEW OF
`U.S. PATENT NO. 10,971,140
`_____________
`Mail Stop Patent Board
`Patent Trial and Appeal Board
`P.O. Box 1450
`Alexandria, VA 22313-1450
`
`Amazon / Zentian Limited
`Exhibit 1043
`Page 1
`
`
`
`UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
`BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
`_____________
`
`AMAZON WEB SERVICES, INC.
`AND AMAZON.COM SERVICES LLC,
`
`- vs. -
`
`ZENTIAN LIMITED
`
`_____________
`
`Patent No. 10,971,140
`
`Petitioners
`
`Patent Owner
`
`Issued: April 6, 2021
`Inventor: Mark Catchpole
`Title: SPEECH RECOGNITION CIRCUIT USING PARALLEL PROCESSORS
`
`Inter Partes Review No. IPR2023-01197
`
`DECLARATION OF LES ATLAS, PH.D. IN SUPPORT OF
`PETITION FOR INTER PARTES REVIEW OF
`U.S. PATENT NO. 10,971,140
`_____________
`Mail Stop Patent Board
`Patent Trial and Appeal Board
`P.O. Box 1450
`Alexandria, VA 22313-1450
`
`Amazon / Zentian Limited
`Exhibit 1043
`Page 1
`
`
`
`
`
`Table of Contents
`
`Page
`INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................... 1
`I.
`QUALIFICATIONS ........................................................................................ 2
`II.
`III. RELEVANT LEGAL PRINCIPLES .............................................................. 5
`IV. MATERIALS CONSIDERED ...................................................................... 10
`V. OPINIONS REGARDING THE ’140 PATENT .......................................... 10
`VI. CONCLUSION .............................................................................................. 10
`
`
`i
`
`Amazon / Zentian Limited
`Exhibit 1043
`Page 2
`
`
`
`
`
`I, Les Atlas, Ph.D., hereby declare as follows:
`I.
`INTRODUCTION
`1. My name is Les Atlas. I am at least eighteen years of age. I have
`
`personal knowledge of and am competent to testify as to the facts and opinions
`
`herein.
`
`2.
`
`I have been retained by counsel for Petitioners Amazon.com Services
`
`LLC and Amazon Web Services, Inc. (collectively, “Petitioners” or “Amazon”) to
`
`provide my opinion about the patentability of claims 1–8 (collectively, the
`
`“Challenged Claims”) of U.S. Patent No. 10,971,140 (the “’140 Patent” (EX1001)),
`
`which I understand is assigned to Zentian Limited (“Patent Owner”). I further
`
`understand that Petitioners are seeking to join a prior proceeding brought by Apple,
`
`Inc. (“Apple”). I understand that Petitioners, like Apple, are requesting that the
`
`United States Patent and Trademark Office cancel claims 1–8. I submit this
`
`declaration in support of Petitioners’ request for inter partes review.
`
`3.
`
`I am being compensated for my time at my usual consulting rate of $950
`
`per hour. Other than this consulting engagement, I have no financial interest in or
`
`professional relationship with Petitioners, nor is my compensation is dependent in
`
`any way upon the outcome of, or my testimony in, the present inter partes review or
`
`any related litigation proceeding. I have no financial interest in or professional
`
`1
`
`Amazon / Zentian Limited
`Exhibit 1043
`Page 3
`
`
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`relationship with Patent Owner. I similarly have no financial interest in the
`
`challenged patent and have had no contact with any named inventor.
`
`II. QUALIFICATIONS
`4. My qualifications for forming the opinions set forth in this Declaration
`
`are summarized here and include my educational background, career history,
`
`publications, and other relevant qualifications. My full curriculum vitae is attached
`
`as Attachment A to this Declaration, and includes my detailed employment
`
`background, professional experience, and list of publications.
`
`5. My academic credentials include a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from
`
`the University of Wisconsin in 1977 and an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Electrical
`
`Engineering from Stanford University in 1978 and 1983, respectively. I was also a
`
`part-time member of the technical staff at SRI International from February 1982 to
`
`November 1983, working on large vocabulary speech recognition systems. I am a
`
`Life Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and have
`
`been and remain active in the fields of electrical engineering, hearing, and speech
`
`science as a university faculty educator and researcher. My work and impact in
`
`hearing research go back 40 years when I designed the world’s first portable speech
`
`processor for cochlear implants. I then also worked on the first real-time
`
`implementation of the Linear Predictive Coding (LPC-10) speech coding standard.
`
`This then-new technology pre-dated speech coding for portable processors, such as
`
`2
`
`Amazon / Zentian Limited
`Exhibit 1043
`Page 4
`
`
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`telephones. Digital voice coding technology has evolved significantly since then
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`and is now used in virtually all cellular phones worldwide. This speech coding
`
`technology and low bit rate music coding technologies share challenges such as
`
`sound shaping and range of amplification, wideband and extended bandwidth with
`
`portability. Both have external processors where sounds are conditioned, often with
`
`parameters carefully chosen to give listeners the impression of natural pitch and
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`overall broadband transmission of the audio signal.
`
`6. More recently, I have addressed the lack of rich music perception and
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`challenges for speech understanding and recognition with noisy backgrounds. In
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`2012, I was awarded a Bloedel Scholar Award, given out by the Bloedel Speech and
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`Hearing Research Institute, for my work in speech recognition and hearing loss. I
`
`also published a paper describing my decades of more theoretic work in the theory
`
`of time-frequency analysis. My work in speech recognition resulted in my election
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`to the high level of Fellow of the IEEE “[f]or contributions to time-varying spectral
`
`analysis and acoustical signal processing.” My work was also used to help
`
`modernize music coding for most listeners worldwide. For my coherent modulation
`
`approach, I received the 2003 Fulbright Senior Scholar Award. As part of the award,
`
`I spent six months at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany and then three months in
`
`Cambridge, England. I also was invited to give a plenary tutorial at the annual top
`
`3
`
`Amazon / Zentian Limited
`Exhibit 1043
`Page 5
`
`
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`international conference on speech perception and automatic recognition—
`
`Interspeech 2012.
`
`7.
`
`Since then, as speech recognition technology has advanced, my
`
`commitment to solving challenges facing natural sounding transmission of speech
`
`and perception of music has resulted in more publications and progress in that
`
`needed research direction. My Ph.D. research included design and tests of the first
`
`portable and real time speech encoder for cochlear implants. This device produced
`
`the first field tests of speech perception by profoundly deaf individuals who had
`
`electrodes implanted in their inner ear. This speech coding work was then expanded
`
`internationally and used in approximately one million cochlear implants performed
`
`worldwide. More recently, I have developed portable and low power approaches to
`
`encode music perception for cochlear implant subjects. My work is described in
`
`papers and was, for example, featured by National Public Radio, available at:
`
`http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/05/18/406838781/deaf-jam-
`
`experiencing-music-through-a-cochlear-implant.
`
`8.
`
`I have also contributed to the separation of speech from noise, which is
`
`important for high-quality automatic speech recognition, have provided new theory
`
`for low bit rate encoding of music, and have made contributions to the theory of
`
`digital signal processing for many audio and speech recognition applications. Many
`
`of the graduate students I supervised went on to academic positions and to top
`
`4
`
`Amazon / Zentian Limited
`Exhibit 1043
`Page 6
`
`
`
`positions in industry. I have organized and attended international conferences which
`
`featured new results on high quality and practical speech recognition by and for the
`
`leading researchers in the field. For example, I have been General Chair of leading
`
`international conferences and symposia, such as the 1998 International Conference
`
`on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing. My research in speech recognition
`
`technology has been funded by the U.S. Department of Defense and many industry
`
`companies. Most recently, Boeing Commercial Airplanes funded my project to use
`
`automatic speech recognition using deep neural networks to add redundancy to air
`
`traffic control conversations between the control tower and pilots. This research
`
`project lasted from 2019 to 2021 and was designed to work over the challenging,
`
`noisy, and distorted very high frequency (VHF) speech channels. I have also
`
`regularly taught classes which included these kinds of digital speech concepts,
`
`mostly at the graduate (Masters and Ph.D.) level. As a result, I have remained
`
`knowledgeable of the progression of speech and low bit rate speech and music
`
`coding technology from 1985 to present.
`
`III. RELEVANT LEGAL PRINCIPLES
`9.
`I am not an attorney, but counsel has explained to me the following
`
`legal principles, which I applied in conducting the analyses expressed in this
`
`declaration.
`
`5
`
`Amazon / Zentian Limited
`Exhibit 1043
`Page 7
`
`
`
`10.
`
`I understand that patent claims may be invalid as “anticipated” in view
`
`of a single prior art reference, or “obvious” in view of one or more prior art
`
`references.
`
`11.
`
`I understand that a claimed invention is unpatentable if the differences
`
`between the invention and the prior art are such that the subject matter of the claim
`
`as a whole would have been obvious, at the time the invention was made, to a person
`
`having ordinary skill in the art to which the subject matter pertains (“POSITA”).
`
`12.
`
`It is my understanding that obviousness is a question of law based on
`
`underlying factual issues including (1) the scope and content of the prior art, (2) the
`
`differences between the prior art and the asserted claims, (3) the level of ordinary
`
`skill in the pertinent art, and (4) the existence of secondary considerations such as
`
`commercial success, long-felt but unresolved needs, failure of others, etc.
`
`13.
`
`I understand that for a single reference or a combination of references
`
`to render obvious the claimed invention, a POSITA must have been able to arrive at
`
`the claims by altering or combining the applied references.
`
`14.
`
`I understand that an obviousness evaluation can be based on a
`
`combination of multiple prior art references. I understand that the prior art references
`
`themselves may provide a suggestion, motivation, or reason to combine, but other
`
`times, the nexus linking two or more prior art references is simple common sense. I
`
`understand that one skilled in the art is also a person of ordinary creativity, and that
`
`6
`
`Amazon / Zentian Limited
`Exhibit 1043
`Page 8
`
`
`
`in many cases one skilled in the art would be motivated by a need or problem known
`
`in the field to combine the teachings of multiple patents or other prior art references
`
`together, along with the knowledge of a POSITA, to address that need or problem. I
`
`also understand that obviousness analysis recognizes that market demand, rather
`
`than scientific literature, may drive innovation, and that a motivation to combine
`
`references may be supplied by the direction of the marketplace.
`
`15.
`
`I understand that I should be aware of and consider the distortion caused
`
`by hindsight bias, i.e., of relying on a hindsight view of the field and of prior art.
`
`Instead, I should cast my mind back to the time of the invention and consider whether
`
`the invention as a whole would have been obvious to one skilled in the art at that
`
`time, considering the background knowledge possessed by a person having ordinary
`
`skill in the art at that time, the needs and problems in the marketplace at that time,
`
`and the teachings of the prior art at that time.
`
`16.
`
`I understand that if a technique has been used to improve one device,
`
`and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve similar
`
`devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious unless its actual application
`
`is beyond his or her skill.
`
`17.
`
`I also understand that practical and common-sense considerations
`
`should guide a proper obviousness analysis, because familiar items may have
`
`obvious uses beyond their primary purposes. I also understand that a person of
`
`7
`
`Amazon / Zentian Limited
`Exhibit 1043
`Page 9
`
`
`
`ordinary skill in the art looking to overcome a problem will often be able to fit
`
`together the teaching of multiple publications. I understand that obviousness analysis
`
`therefore considers the inferences and creative steps that a person of ordinary skill
`
`in the art would employ under the circumstances.
`
`18.
`
`I understand that a particular combination may be proven obvious by
`
`showing that it was obvious to try the combination. For example, when there is a
`
`design need or market pressure to solve a problem and there are a finite number of
`
`identified, predictable solutions, a person of ordinary skill has good reason to pursue
`
`the known options within his or her technical grasp because the result is likely the
`
`product not of innovation but of ordinary skill and common-sense.
`
`19.
`
`I also understand that the combination of familiar elements according
`
`to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable
`
`results. When a work is available in one field of endeavor, design incentives and
`
`other market forces can prompt variation of it, either in the same field or a different
`
`one. If a person of ordinary skill can implement a predictable variation, the patent
`
`claims is likely obvious.
`
`20.
`
`It is further my understanding that a proper obviousness analysis
`
`focuses on what was known or obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, not
`
`just the patentee. I thus understand that any need or problem known in the field of
`
`8
`
`Amazon / Zentian Limited
`Exhibit 1043
`Page 10
`
`
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`endeavor at the time of invention and addressed by the patent can provide a reason
`
`for combining the elements in the manner claimed.
`
`21.
`
`I understand that a claim can be obvious in light of a single reference,
`
`without the need to combine references, if the elements of the claim that are not
`
`found explicitly or inherently in the reference can be supplied by the common-sense
`
`of one of skill in the art.
`
`22.
`
`I understand that secondary indicia of non-obviousness may include (1)
`
`a long felt but unmet need in the prior art that was satisfied by the invention of the
`
`patent; (2) commercial success of processes covered by the patent; (3) unexpected
`
`results achieved by the invention; (4) praise of the invention by others skilled in the
`
`art; (5) taking of licenses under the patent by others; (6) deliberate copying of the
`
`invention; (7) failure of others to find a solution to the long felt need; and (8)
`
`skepticism by experts.
`
`23.
`
`I also understand that there must be a relationship between any such
`
`secondary considerations and the invention. I also understand that contemporaneous
`
`and independent invention by others is a secondary consideration supporting an
`
`obviousness determination.
`
`24.
`
`In sum, my understanding is that prior art teachings are properly
`
`combined where a person of ordinary skill in the art having the understanding and
`
`knowledge reflected in the prior art and motivated by the general problem facing the
`
`9
`
`Amazon / Zentian Limited
`Exhibit 1043
`Page 11
`
`
`
`inventor, would have been led to make the combination of elements recited in the
`
`claims. Under this analysis, the prior art references themselves, or any need or
`
`problem known in the field of endeavor at the time of the invention, can provide a
`
`reason for combining the elements of multiple prior art references in the claimed
`
`manner.
`
`IV. MATERIALS CONSIDERED
`25.
`In forming my opinions, I relied on my experience, education, and
`
`training, as well as my detailed review of the Declaration of Christopher Schmandt
`
`in Support of Apple’s Petition for Inter Partes Review of U.S. Patent No. 10,971,140
`
`(the “Schmandt Declaration,” EX1003), including all materials referenced therein.
`
`V.
`
`OPINIONS REGARDING THE ’140 PATENT
`26.
`I have reviewed the Schmandt Declaration submitted in connection
`
`with Apple’s petition for inter partes review of the ’140 Patent (IPR2023-00037),
`
`including materials and exhibits cited therein. I fully agree with, and hereby adopt,
`
`the opinions set forth in the Schmandt Declaration.
`
`VI. CONCLUSION
`27.
`I hereby declare that all statements made herein of my own knowledge
`
`are true and that all statements made on information and belief are believed to be
`
`true; and further that these statements were made with the knowledge that willful
`
`false statements and the like so made are punishable by fine or imprisonment, or
`
`both, under Section 1001 of Title 18 of the United States Code.
`
`10
`
`Amazon / Zentian Limited
`Exhibit 1043
`Page 12
`
`
`
`Dated: July 11, 2023
`
`Les Atlas, Ph.D.
`
`11
`
`Amazon / Zentian Limited
`Exhibit 1043
`Page 13
`
`
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