Voice SMS Gets Patented
EFY News Network
(Friday, March 16, 2007 10:09:02 AM)


The patent covers several aspects of the Voice SMS technology invented by Kirusa that form the foundation of its Voice SMS product offerings.

Friday, March 16, 2007: New Jersey-based Kirusa, a mobile value added services provider, has been granted a patent on its Voice SMS technology (patent number 7,184,786) by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The patent granted to Kirusa covers several important capabilities Kirusa brings to Voice SMS, including Direct Listen technology that allows users to directly access and reply to a voice message without any intervening login or clumsy navigation. Other important claims cover convergence with MMS, and the sending of pre-recorded messages (e.g. a 'standard' birthday greeting). Kirusa has also disclosed use of Voice SMS for other purposes such as Voicemail notification and video messaging in this patent.
Discussing this important new patent, Dr Inderpal Singh Mumick, founder and CEO, Kirusa, said, “Our vision for Kirusa can be summed up in one word – ‘innovation’. Kirusa is innovating technologies that make a difference to the lives of people, in the way they communicate, and in the way they interact with each other.”

For Kirusa’s customers, the patent provides the basis for Voice SMS, an innovative service that has revolutionised communication between individuals by allowing them to send short voice messages by speaking, just as they send short text messages by typing. The ease-of-use inherent in Kirusa’s Voice SMS paves the way for wide scale adoption of this service, not seen since the success of text SMS.

According to Dr David Berkley, chief scientist, Kirusa, “We believe this is the first patent on Voice SMS issued in the United States and is a significant milestone for Kirusa. The invention of Voice SMS involved brainstorming by some of Kirusa’s best technical minds. These inventors had a prime objective of making the basic Voice SMS concept practical and easy to use for mobile subscribers.”