This past Tuesday (the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awards patents once a week on Tuesday), the U.S. Patent Office awarded Microsoft Corp. a nice New Year's present in the form of a utility patent for key search engine technology. The patent, entitled "Using automated content analysis for audio/video content consumption" relates to a novel way of indexing audio/video files so as to make it easier for users to find the audio/video files, as well as the data within those files. This technology opens up an entire genre of data to the world of search engines. And with Microsoft recently making in-roads into the search engine market with its Bing search engine, it is instructive to keep abreast of the patents awarded to this tech giant. 
Microsoft's Patent No. 7,640,272 has a short Summary of the Invention section which says it all: "Audio/video (A/V) content is analyzed using speech and language analysis components. Metadata is automatically generated based upon the analysis. The metadata is used in generating user interface interaction components which allow a user to view subject matter in various segments of the A/V content and to interact with the A/V content based on the automatically generated metadata." A review of Microsoft's patent reveals that the claimed subject matter is directed to a system that performs natural language processing on an audio/video file and then provides an interface that visually illustrates the identity of the speakers in the A/V file and provides a text transcript of what the speakers said. The interface also allows a user to click on an area of interest to view or listen only to a desired segment of the A/V file.
This patent is highly relevant to the search engine industry and its use should be closely watched. Today, there is no extensive method by which search engines catalog videos available on the web. Typically, videos are indexed by their titles or descriptions of the video entered by a user, usually the provider or a viewer of the video. This results in incorrect and incomplete cataloging of videos. Microsoft's patent, however, provides an ingenious way of progressing the current state of the art. The patent describes a system where A/V files are processed to garner the information within, thereby allowing the A/V files to be indexed by a search engine and easily viewed by a user. Imagine a system where you can search every YouTube video for a conversation of a topic of choice. For example, imagine that you're interested in finding out what the Fed Chief Bernanke has specifically said about Chinese steel imports. The system described by Microsoft's patent would allow a user to easily search for and find a short snippet of a television interview where Bernanke briefly mentioned this issue.
Although Microsoft's patented system has not been implemented yet, and there are questions of availability of computing resources necessary to process so much data, Microsoft's patent does appear as a logical next step in the search engine industry. There is a mountain of data located at online video sharing sites and Microsoft has found a way to index it and easily view it.
As a Miami patent attorney, I am constantly advising my clients that a valuable patent is one that accurately predicts the path of an industry. Microsoft may have done just that. Time will tell.
