SoundHound Inc. Principal Scientist Bernard Mont-Reynaud Recipient of the Silicon Valley Intellectual Property Law Association’s 43^rd Inventor of the Year Award

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SoundHound Inc. is thrilled to announce that Principal Scientist Bernard Mont-Reynaud has been selected as the recipient of the Silicon Valley Intellectual Property Law Association’s 43rd Inventor of the Year Award. The award presentation by SVIPLA was made on January 22, 2020, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Palo Alto. For additional program details, please visit: www.les-svc.org.

Mont-Reynaud is a co-inventor on over 20 granted patents, with many more pending. In his 10 years at SoundHound Inc., he has been one of the driving forces behind technologies that helped propel SoundHound from startup to a Silicon Valley unicorn. Mont-Reynaud is notably a co-inventor of conversation state technology. Besides enabling natural follow-up queries and the ability to modularize natural language domains, his invention makes SoundHound’s Collective AI™ scalable. Conversation state technology is an integral part of SoundHound’s voice AI platform Houndify™, powering the conversational interface for global brands including Mercedes-Benz, iHeartMedia, Honda, Hyundai, Pandora, and more.

After Mont-Reynaud graduated from Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, France, he did research at INRIA at Stanford University, where he obtained a Ph.D. in Computer Science. He taught computer science at UC Berkeley before joining the Stanford Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, researching music analysis. The analysis, visualization and perception of music and audio have been major themes of his work over the years, along with image processing, real-time systems, advanced UI design, and natural language understanding. Mont-Reynaud has also worked at Lucasfilm, Xerox PARC, Studer Editech, FXPAL, Sony, Audience, and Cadence.

“I am truly honored to be the recipient of this year’s prestigious SVIPLA’s Inventor of the Year Award,” said Mont-Reynaud. “To be recognized in the same category as Silicon Valley giants such as Bob Noyce and Marcian 'Ted' Hoff is humbling. I look forward to making continued impactful contributions at SoundHound Inc. that will help shape the next decade-plus of voice technologies.”

In addition to the award, a one-hour Ethics CLE presentation, “Ethics in IP Litigation, IPR Proceedings, and Patent Prosecution,” was presented during the program by Sarah Moore, IP Litigator at Cooley LLP. She discussed recent ethics opinions and the application of the ethical duties to different stages throughout the IP litigation lifecycle, IPR proceedings, and patent prosecution.

About SoundHound Inc.

SoundHound Inc. turns sound into understanding and actionable meaning. We believe in enabling humans to interact with the things around them in the same way we interact with each other: by speaking naturally to mobile phones, cars, TVs, music speakers, and every other part of the emerging ‘connected’ world. Our consumer product, Hound, leverages our Speech-to-Meaning™ and Deep Meaning Understanding™ technologies to create a groundbreaking smartphone experience and is the first product to build on the Houndify platform. Our SoundHound product applies our technology to music, enabling people to discover, explore, and share the music around them, and even find the name of that song stuck in their heads by singing or humming. Through the Houndify platform, we aim to bring voice-enabled AI to everyone and enable others to build on top of it. We call this Collective AI. Our Mission: Houndify everything.

About the Silicon Valley Intellectual Property Law Association

For over 40 years, the Silicon Valley Intellectual Property Law Association (SVIPLA) has been an active professional association serving members who focus their practice on intellectual property matters including patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, licensing, litigation and other related fields. Since 1977, SVIPLA has honored annually a member of the intellectual property community as its Inventor of the Year. The recipients have made outstanding contributions to the technology industry, including such inventions for: integrated circuit technology, basic gene splicing, automobile navigation systems, over the counter medications drug delivery systems, the bar code, the optical mouse and many more impressive and recognizable inventions. SVIPLA conducts monthly meetings featuring in-house and law firm representatives discussing topics relevant to current intellectual property issues.