Amazon sued by early voice tech developers who allege that company infringed on patents

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Former investors and employees from VoiceBox Technologies are suing Amazon, alleging that the Seattle tech giant infringed on six of its speech recognition and natural language patents. The lawsuit, filed today in Delaware federal court, pits Amazon against VB Assets LLC, a new company created to manage patents still owned by VoiceBox, a longtime Seattle-area startup that was acquired last year by Nuance Communications. Now its inventors and backers are going after Amazon, which has spent the past several years building out products and services powered by its Alexa voice technology. A VB Assets spokesperson said the company is not commenting on pending litigation, but pointed GeekWire to this 2006 news report showing how VoiceBox was attempting to build the equivalent of Alexa long before Amazon was. Nuance, a speech and imaging technology giant headquartered in Burlington, Mass., has a large presence in the Seattle region as a result of several acquisitions in addition to the VoiceBox deal.

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