Patents by Inventor Gerhard Backfried

Gerhard Backfried has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 6801893
    Abstract: A computerized method is provided for adding a new word to a vocabulary of a speech system, the vocabulary comprising words and corresponding acoustic patterns for a language or language domain. Within a determination step for the new word, a regularity value is determined which measures the conformity with respect to the pronunciation in the language or language domain. In a comparison step, the regularity value is compared to a threshold value to decide whether the conformity is insufficient. Only in the affirmative case of insufficient conformity, a prompting step is performed, prompting for additional information on the pronunciation of the new word. Finally, in an extension step, the new word and an acoustic pattern of the new word are added to the vocabulary.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 22, 2000
    Date of Patent: October 5, 2004
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Gerhard Backfried, Hubert Crépy
  • Patent number: 6327561
    Abstract: A method for supporting customized tokenization of domain-specific text acomprises the steps of: loading domain-specific tokenization rules corresponding to the customized tokenization of the domain-specific text; tokenizing the domain-specific text using the loaded domain-specific tokenization rules; and, further tokenizing the domain-specific text using general purpose tokenization rules. The loading step of the inventive method can comprise: loading a speech recognition vocabulary; and, loading domain-specific tokenization rules corresponding to the speech recognition vocabulary. In addition, the tokenizing step can comprise identifying each substring in the domain-specific text matching a regular expression having a corresponding replacement pattern in the loaded domain-specific tokenization rules, and replacing each substring identified in the identifying step with the replacement pattern corresponding to the matched regular expression.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 7, 1999
    Date of Patent: December 4, 2001
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corp.
    Inventors: Maria E. Smith, Bernard John Grainger, Hubert Crépy, Martin Herzog, Gerhard Backfried