Synthetic voice sales system and phoneme copyright authentication system

• US 20030009340A1
• Filed: 06/07/2002
• Published: 01/09/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 06/08/2001
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Matsushita Electric Industrial Company Limited (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Matsushita Electric Industrial Company Limited (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Inventors: Inoue, Masayuki, Mase, Masaru, Yuge, Ryoichi, Korehisa, Yoichi, Hayashi, Kazunori
• Application Number:
  US10/164,740
• Publication Number:
  US 20030009340A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/270
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/00 Speech synthesis; Text to speech systems

Abstract

A system comprising: a copyright owner registration section for registering a copyright owner of phonemes; a phoneme combination section for combining phonemes using a database constructed of phonemes supplied from a phoneme capture section; a royalty calculation section for calculating the royalty for the copyright of the phonemes according to the information on the amount of phonemes used, for each of copyright owners; and a monetary payment section for providing payment of the royalty to the copyright owner based on the information on the charges. This system protects the copyright of the phonemes the speaker has and allows users to readily purchase products or services utilizing phonemes.

Claims

1. A synthetic voice sales system comprising:

(a) a phoneme capture section for capturing a phoneme, i.e. a smallest constituent component of a human voice;

(b) a copyright owner registration section for registering a copyright owner of the phoneme;

(c) a phoneme combination section for combining the phoneme supplied from said phoneme capture section and for pronouncing the combined phoneme;

(d) a phoneme usage calculation section for calculating an amount of the phoneme used by said phoneme combination section;

(e) a monetary payment section for providing payment of a usage charge to an account, according to information on the phoneme usage calculated by said phoneme usage calculation section and registration in said copyright owner registration section.

2. The synthetic voice sales system as set forth in claim 1, wherein said copyright owner registration section registers an account for receiving a royalty for a copyright of the phoneme when the phoneme is used.

6. The synthetic voice sales system as set forth in any one of claims 1, 3, and 5, wherein the phoneme is a sound made of a combination of at least one of a vowel sound and a consonant sound.

7. The synthetic voice sales system as set forth in any one of claims 1, 3, and 5, wherein the phoneme is a word.

8. The synthetic voice sales system as set forth in any one of claims 1, 3, and 5, wherein the phoneme is one of a clause and a sentence.

9. The synthetic voice sales system as set forth in any one of claims 1, 3, and 5, wherein the phoneme is one of an onomatopoeia and a mimetic word.

10. The synthetic voice sales system as set forth in claim 1, wherein the phoneme is a digital synthetic sound.

3. A synthetic voice sales system comprising:

(a) a phoneme, the phoneme being a smallest constituent component of a voice and having a personality, and a phoneme capture section for capturing the phoneme;

(b) a copyright owner registration section for registering a copyright owner of the phoneme;

(c) a phoneme combination section for combining the phoneme using a database constructed of the phoneme supplied from said phoneme capture section and for pronouncing the combined phoneme;

(d) a phoneme usage calculation section for calculating an amount of the phoneme used by said phoneme combination section;

(e) a royalty calculation section for calculating a royalty for a copyright of the phoneme according to the phoneme usage calculated by said phoneme usage calculation section for each copyright owner of the phoneme;

(f) a monetary payment section for providing payment of the royalty for the copyright to the copyright owner of the phoneme based on information from said royalty calculation section; and

(g) a sales section for supplying one of a product and a service utilizing the phoneme to a user.

4. The synthetic voice sales system as set forth in claim 3, wherein said sales section sends information obtained from said phoneme combination section to the user and collects a charge from the user.

5. A synthetic voice sales system comprising:

(a) a phoneme database, wherein said database is constructed of data of a phoneme, the phoneme being a smallest constituent component of a voice;

(b) a phoneme combination section for reading out and connecting an appropriate phoneme from said phoneme database and for generating synthetic voice data for each of analyzed speech synthesis subject data;

(c) a server having a delivery section for delivering to a user the synthetic voice data generated by said phoneme combination section;

(d) a registration section for registering an account for receiving a royalty for a copyright of the phoneme when the phoneme is used;

(e) a usage calculation section for calculating an amount of the phoneme used by said phoneme combination section; and

(f) a monetary payment section for providing payment of a usage charge to the account registered in said registration section, according to information on the phoneme usage calculated by said usage calculation section.

11. A phoneme copyright authentication system comprising:

(a) a phoneme capture section for capturing a phoneme, i.e. a smallest constituent component of a voice;

(b) a copyright owner registration section for registering a copyright owner of the phoneme captured by said phoneme capture section;

(c) a phoneme combination section for combining the phoneme, using a database constructed of the phoneme supplied from said phoneme capture section and for pronouncing the combined phoneme; and

(d) a royalty calculation section for calculating a royalty for a copyright of the phoneme according to information on an amount of the phoneme used in a phoneme combination process by said phoneme combination section for each copyright owner of the phoneme.

12. The phoneme copyright authentication system as set forth in claim 11, further comprising:

a phoneme usage calculation section for calculating the amount of the phoneme used by said phoneme combination section; and

a monetary payment section for providing payment of a usage charge to an account registered in said copyright owner registration section, according to information on the phoneme usage calculated by said phoneme usage calculation section.