Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Nuance sues Vlingo over speech patent

By Mass High Tech Staff

Speech and imaging software maker Nuance Communications Inc. reports that it has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Vlingo Corp. in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

Burlington-based Nuance Communications (Nasdaq: NUAN) claims that Cambridge-based Vlingo infringes a Nuance patent covering a technique for adapting a speech recognition system to the speech of individuals or groups. Nuance seeks monetary damages for infringement and injunctive relief to prevent Vlingo from continuing to infringe on the patent, company officials said.

Vlingo CEO Dave Grannan couldn’t be reached for comment.

Nuance, founded in 1992 as Visioneer Inc., acquired seven companies during 2007. In April, it announced a $363 million acquisition of eScription Inc., a Needham-based provider of computer-aided medical transcription technology.
During the fiscal year ending in September 2007, Nuance reported a net loss of $14 million on revenue of $602 million.

Vlingo, founded in 2006, develops voice-enabled applications for cell phones that allow users to activate enabled text fields using only voice prompts, including notes to self, text messaging and e-mail.

The company was launched by local technology industry veterans Mike Phillips and John Nguyen.

Phillips, a co-founder of Boston-based SpeechWorks Inc. (which merged with Nuance during 2005 in a $221 million deal) is Vlingo’s CTO. Nguyen, a former vice president of engineering at Groove Mobile Inc. (acquired in March by Framingham’s NMS Communications Corp. for $14.5 million) is the company’s vice president of engineering.

In April, Vlingo completed a $20 million Series B round of funding led by Yahoo Inc. The financing also included existing investors Charles River Ventures and Sigma Partners.

The funding increased Vlingo’s total venture capital to $26.5 million.