We are extremely pleased to announce that we’ve received notification from the US Patent and Trademark Office that our 21st US patent “Method and Apparatus for Expressing Time in an Output Text” has been approved and will shortly be issued.
As we’ve been reporting on our latest technologies and new clients, one of the critical areas to keep our shareholders apprised of is the exciting progress we’ve made in the area of patenting our state-of-the-art Natural Language Generation (NLG) technologies and protecting our intellectual property (IP).
The 21 patents we presently have are an outstanding accomplishment that completely sets us apart from our competitors. These patents are considered “core” patents because they are fundamental to NLG. They cover critical NLG processes that Arria applies to our innovative NLG applications that are currently being delivered to our growing list of global clients. See the List of Patents on our website.
Regarding this latest patent, Arria’s Chief Development Scientist Dr Yaji Sripada remarked that, “The degree of naturalness of the output of an NLG application depends heavily on how well the data-driven words and phrases fit into the higher-level language constructs such as sentences and other syntactic structures. Time phrases are one of the most important data-driven language constructs as they express an input time period such as 5 to 8 PM as a time phrase such as ‘in the evening.’
“This patent describes a method for generating a time phrase corresponding to an input time period (e.g. 5 to 8 PM) that fits well into the context of a sentence by selecting an appropriate expression from groups such as ‘in the evening,’ ‘before going to bed,’ ‘after work’ and ‘before dinner.’ From the NLG-theory perspective, this task of generating time phrases falls into what is known as microplanning, which has always been an area of focus for Arria’s patenting strategy.”
Arria’s portfolio of NLG software patents has unrivaled diversity and depth, covering every phase of rules-based data analysis and text generation as well as many of the most important features and benefits of reporting automation. Arria continues to file patent applications on both under-the-hood improvements to its NLG engine and enrichments to the user experience in terms of features, ease of use, and integration with other software.
According to Sharon Daniels, CEO of Arria NLG: “Since the company’s inception, we’ve paid careful attention to protecting our IP. And I’m pleased to report that our patent development program is impressive. We have a 100% success rate: 21 core US patents have been issued or allowed and none have been refused.”
Arria remains focused on securing US patents on our key NLG innovations. We feel it’s prudent to continue to lay the foundations to safeguard our products and critical processes, ensuring their protection, while also maintaining our position as one of the world’s leading NLG and AI innovators. The patents, granted to Arria NLG so far, demonstrate our commitment to building unrivaled technology and securing greater long-term value for shareholders.
