— The United States Patent and Trademark Office issued four patents to Intervoice, Inc. (NASDAQ: INTV) over the past 18 months for technology designed to provide enterprises with enhanced call center technology.
 
One patent, the System and Method for Operating a Highly Distributed Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system (Patent No.: 7,012,996), can be used to allow enterprises to geographically manage the flow of calls and leverage automation and live agent resources efficiently.
 
Another recently-awarded patent designed to aid the manual process of transcribing what callers say on the phone, the Method and System for Enhanced Transcription, (Patent No.: 6,865,258), can be applied across a number of regulated industries.
 
Finally, two additional patents - Allocation of Resources to Flexible Requests (Patent No.: 6,845,154) and Resource Management Utilizing Quantified Resource Attributes (Patent No.: 6,978,006) provide a method of matching agents' skills to customer needs. Patent No. 6,845,154 specifically addresses the issue of allocating agents to callers.
 
Intervoice currently has more than 100 US patents awarded or pending and continues to be active in the development of new technologies. Full descriptions of the above-mentioned patents are available at www.uspto.gov by doing a patent number search under issued patents.