The Silencing of Maya

Dana:

Eleven weeks ago I wrote about a lawsuit that posed a threat to my daughter's voice. Maya, who is four years old and unable to speak, uses an app called Speak for Yourself (SfY) to communicate, and the creators of SfY were being sued for patent infringement by Prentke Romich Company (PRC) and Semantic Compaction Systems (SCS), two much larger companies that make designated communication devices (not iPad apps). You can read the original post here, and see the numerous news articles that were spurred by this case here. Maya was poised to become a very real, very human, and very adorable casualty of patent law.

After that blog post, two big things happened. First, I learned a tiny bit about patent law, most notably that while in the worst case scenario (for us, a verdict again Speak for Yourself) the judge could shut down the app, it was also quite possible that PRC/SCS would only be awarded monetary damages. I was able to relax a little and lose some of the terror that SfY (which Maya was already relying on) would be suddenly yanked away or disappear. The second, and far more exciting development, is that Maya's progress in using the app to communicate has been staggering. In my original post I imagined a future in which I could hear Maya "speak" in phrases and share her thoughts . . . now, only weeks later, we are living that future. She politely makes requests, tapping out "I want cookie please." She makes jokes, like looking out the window at the bright sunshine and tapping "today rain" and laughing (what can I say, 4 year olds don't tell the best jokes). And two days ago she looked at my husband as he walked by and tapped "Daddy, I love you."

Posted by Jim Zellmer at June 14, 2012 4:44 AM
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