US Patent Issued to NTT on Sept. 1 for "Masking apparatus, masking method, and program" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 1 -- United States Patent no. 12,725,598, issued on Sept. 1, was assigned to NTT Inc. (Tokyo).

"Masking apparatus, masking method, and program" was invented by Kenichi Noguchi (Tokyo), Kazunori Kobayashi (Tokyo) and Hiroaki Ito (Tokyo).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A masking technology is provided for curbing discomfort at the time of a change in a masking sound by presenting a video corresponding to the masking sound at the time of the change in the masking sound. A masking device includes: a spoken voice volume evaluation unit configured to generate an evaluation value for a volume of a spoken voice (hereinafter referred to as a spoken voice volume evaluation value) f...