Bank of America Sued for Patent Infringement Over AI Robot Erica

Bank of America Corp. is facing a patent infringement lawsuit over the technology that powers its user-facing virtual financial assistant “Erica.”

Dialect LLC, a patent assertion entity, alleges the bank’s Erica feature is unlawfully using patented methods for speech recognition created by software developer VoiceBox Technologies.

Dialect is the owner of VoiceBox’s patents, according to the complaint, filed March 22 in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

Erica’s functions and Bank of America’s patent filings show the bank developed and implemented voice-recognition systems using methods described in VoiceBox’s patents, Dialect argues.

In 2016, VoiceBox and ...