US 10297249

Here is a concise summary of US Patent 10,297,249, including details of recent legal activity.

Summary of U.S. Patent 10,297,249

Title: System and method for a cooperative conversational voice user interface

Assignee: VB Assets LLC

Inventors: Larry Baldwin, Tom Freeman, Michael Tjalve, Blane Ebersold, Chris Weider

Filing Date: April 20, 2015

Issue Date: May 21, 2019

Abstract:
A cooperative conversational voice user interface is provided. The cooperative conversational voice user interface may build upon short-term and long-term shared knowledge to generate one or more explicit and/or implicit hypotheses about an intent of a user utterance. The hypotheses may be ranked based on varying degrees of certainty, and an adaptive response may be generated for the user. Responses may be worded based on the degrees of certainty and to frame an appropriate domain for a subsequent utterance. In one implementation, misrecognitions may be tolerated, and conversational course may be corrected based on subsequent utterances and/or responses.

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Plain-Language Overview of Independent Claims

This patent has two independent claims which outline the core inventions:

Independent Claim 1: This claim describes a method for a voice-controlled computer system to have a more natural, cooperative conversation with a user. The system receives a spoken request, figures out the user's likely intent by creating several possible interpretations (hypotheses), and then ranks these possibilities based on how certain it is about each one. This ranking is influenced by both short-term memory from the current conversation and long-term knowledge about the user. The system then gives an "adaptive" response, which is a reply or action tailored to the certainty of its interpretation. A key aspect is the system's ability to learn from the conversation; for instance, if an interpretation is wrong, it won't make the same mistake again for the same spoken input.

Independent Claim 13: This claim describes the computer system itself, designed to carry out the method from Claim 1. It specifies a system with at least one processor and memory that stores instructions for performing the cooperative conversational process. This includes modules for building "shared knowledge" from conversations, generating and ranking hypotheses about the user's intent based on this knowledge, and then creating an adaptive response. Like the method, the system is designed to correct its own course during a conversation, for example, by not repeating incorrect interpretations.

Litigation Status

As of April 2026, U.S. Patent 10,297,249 is the subject of ongoing litigation. The patent owner, VB Assets LLC, has asserted this patent in a case against SoundHound AI, Inc. (Case 1:24-cv-01279) in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware. Recent court filings in March 2026 indicate that the case is active, with the parties engaged in procedural matters such as amending complaints and establishing timelines for claim construction. This patent is one of several related to conversational AI technology that VB Assets LLC is currently litigating. No directly related cases were found in the CAFC dockets for 2026.