DOCUMENT DISTRIBUTION AND INTERACTION

• US 20150127348A1
• Filed: 11/01/2013
• Published: 05/07/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 11/01/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Adobe Inc.
• Original Assignee: Adobe Systems Incorporated (Adobe Inc.)
• Inventors: Follis, Benjamin D.
• Granted Patent: US 9,942,396 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/260
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/10 Protecting distributed programs or content, e.g. vending or licensing of copyrighted material protection in video systems or pay television H04N7/16 ; Digital rights management [DRM]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/32 using biometric data, e.g. fingerprints, iris scans or voiceprints
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/602 Providing cryptographic facilities or services
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/645 using a third party
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/169 Annotation, e.g. comment data or footnotes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/197 Version control for software G06F8/71
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/58 Use of machine translation, e.g. for multi-lingual retrieval, for server-side translation for client devices or for real-time translation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/103 Workflow collaboration or project management
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/02 Methods for producing synthetic speech; Speech synthesisers
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/26 Speech to text systems G10L15/08 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 17/00 Speaker identification or verification techniques
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/3247 involving digital signatures
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/493 Interactive information services, e.g. directory enquiries ; Arrangements therefor, e.g. interactive voice response [IVR] systems or voice portals
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/4936 Speech interaction details speech recognition per se G10L15/00

Abstract

Workflows are provided that enable documents to be distributed, assented to, and otherwise interacted with on an aural and/or oral basis. Such workflows can be implemented so as to allow a recipient to receive, understand, and interact with a document using conventional components such as the microphone and speaker provided by a telephone. For instance, in one embodiment a document originator may send a document to a recipient with a request for an electronic signature. The document may include an audio version of the document terms. The recipient can listen to the audio version of the document terms and record an electronic signature that represents assent to such terms. An electronic signature server can record the recipient'"'"'s electronic signature and incorporate it into the document, such that it forms part of the electronic document just as a traditional handwritten signature forms part of a signed paper document.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented document processing method comprising:

receiving, from a document originator, metadata that identifies a document, wherein the document includes a plurality of document terms and is to be distributed to a document recipient as part of a workflow;

saving, in a document repository, an audio recording corresponding to at least a portion of the document terms that are included within the document;

sending, to the document recipient in response to a received request, at least a portion of the audio recording;

prompting the document recipient with an audible request to provide a spoken response to at least one of the document and the audio recording;

receiving, from the document recipient, the spoken response; and

saving the spoken response such that it is correlated with the document.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein:

the spoken response comprises a phrase indicating that the document recipient has assented to the document terms;

the method further comprises comparing a voiceprint of the spoken response with a voiceprint of an authorized document signer; and

the spoken response is correlated with the document only if the voiceprint of the spoken response substantially matches the voiceprint of the authorized document signer.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising sending a notification based on the spoken response.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the spoken response comprises a phrase indicating that the document recipient has assented to the document terms.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the audible request to provide the spoken response is sent to the document recipient after the audio recording is sent to the document recipient.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least a portion of the audio recording is sent to the document recipient via a public switched telephone network.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the document is saved in the document repository such that the document is logically associated with the audio recording.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the audio recording comprises a reading of at least a portion of the document terms by the document originator.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving the document from the document originator; and

submitting the document to a text-to-speech module configured to generate the audio recording based on the document.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein sending at least a portion of the audio recording to the document recipient comprises providing an audio stream of the audio recording to a player provided by the document recipient.

11. An electronic signature system comprising:

a document repository storing (a) a document comprising a plurality of document terms, (b) an audio recording corresponding to at least a portion of the document terms, and (c) metadata indicating a status of the document with respect to a workflow;

an interactivity module configured to send, to a document recipient in response to a received request, at least a portion of the audio recording and an audible request to provide a spoken response to the audio recording, wherein the interactivity module is further configured to receive the spoken response from the document recipient; and

a document status module configured to modify the metadata stored in the document repository based on the spoken response received from the document recipient.

12. The electronic signature system of claim 11, further comprising a transcription services module configured to generate the audio recording based on text-to-speech processing of the document.

13. The electronic signature system of claim 11, wherein:

the spoken response comprises an electronic signature indicating that the document recipient has assented to the document terms; and

the metadata is modified to indicate that the document recipient has assented to the document terms.

14. The electronic signature system of claim 11, further comprising a transcription services module configured to generate a transcript of the spoken response, wherein the transcript of the spoken response is stored in the document repository and includes a logical association to the document.

15. The electronic signature system of claim 11, further comprising an authentication services module configured to compare a voiceprint of the spoken response with a voiceprint of an authorized document signer, wherein the metadata is modified only if the voiceprint of the spoken response substantially matches the voiceprint of the authorized document signer.

16. The electronic signature system of claim 11, wherein the document repository comprises a networked storage resource provided remotely with respect to the interactivity module and the document status module.

17. A computer program product encoded with instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, causes a document workflow process to be carried out, the process comprising:

receiving, from a document originator, metadata that identifies a document, wherein the document includes a plurality of document terms and is to be distributed to a document recipient as part of a workflow;

saving, in a document repository, an audio recording corresponding to at least a portion of the document terms that are included within the document;

sending, to the document recipient in response to a received request, at least a portion of the audio recording;

prompting the document recipient with an audible request to provide an audible response to at least one of the document and the audio recording;

receiving, from the document recipient, the audible response; and

saving the audible response such that it is correlated with the document.

18. The computer program product of claim 17, wherein receiving the audible response comprises receiving a prerecorded response from the document recipient.

19. The computer program product of claim 17, wherein:

the audible response comprises a phrase indicating that the document recipient has assented to the document terms;

the document workflow process further comprises comparing a voiceprint of the audible response with a voiceprint of an authorized document signer; and

the audible response is correlated with the document only if the voiceprint of the audible response substantially matches the voiceprint of the authorized document signer.

20. The computer program product of claim 17, wherein the audible response comprises touch-tones generated by a telephone.