Prior art

To identify the most relevant prior art for US Patent 10,297,249, I need to access the patent's full citation list. Since I cannot directly browse the USPTO database in real-time to extract the full list of cited prior art and their descriptions, I will rely on the provided patent text, which often includes such information within its "CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS" and "BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION" sections, as well as the list of "Prior art documents" typically found in patent records.

Based on the provided patent text, here are the prior art references explicitly mentioned and incorporated by reference:

Prior Art for US Patent 10,297,249

The patent US10297249B2 references several prior art documents, particularly in the context of its "CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS" and within the description of the "context determination process."

1. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/513,269

   • Full Citation: U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/513,269, entitled “Dynamic Speech Sharpening,” filed Aug. 31, 2006, which issued as U.S. Pat. No. 7,634,409 on Dec. 15, 2009.
   • Publication/Filing Date: Filed August 31, 2006.
   • Brief Description: This patent describes techniques for phonetic dictation to recognize a phoneme stream, used by the speech recognition engine 110.
   • Potentially Anticipates: This prior art primarily relates to the underlying speech recognition technology mentioned in the descriptions of both independent claims, specifically the processing of a user's utterance by a "speech recognition engine (ASR)" to generate preliminary interpretations (Claim 1 and Claim 13). It details how the initial acoustic-to-text conversion might be performed.

2. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/197,504

   • Full Citation: U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/197,504, entitled “Systems and Methods for Responding to Natural Language Speech Utterance,” filed Aug. 5, 2005, which issued as U.S. Pat. No. 7,640,160 on Dec. 29, 2009.
   • Publication/Filing Date: Filed August 5, 2005.
   • Brief Description: This patent describes systems and methods for responding to natural language speech utterances, specifically how one or more context domain agents compete to determine the most appropriate domain for a given utterance within the context determination process 255.
   • Potentially Anticipates: This directly relates to the "context determination process" described in both independent claims, particularly how the system establishes meaning within a conversation by determining one or more contexts for a request. It details the use of competing context domain agents to determine the most appropriate domain for an utterance (Claim 1 and Claim 13).

3. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/212,693

   • Full Citation: U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/212,693, entitled “Mobile Systems and Methods of Supporting Natural Language Human-Machine Interactions,” filed Aug. 29, 2005, which issued as U.S. Pat. No. 7,949,529 on May 24, 2011.
   • Publication/Filing Date: Filed August 29, 2005.
   • Brief Description: This patent describes mobile systems and methods for supporting natural language human-machine interactions, also in the context of how one or more context domain agents compete to determine the most appropriate domain for a given utterance within the context determination process 255.
   • Potentially Anticipates: Similar to the previous reference, this directly relates to the "context determination process" described in both independent claims, especially concerning the use of competing context domain agents for disambiguating utterances and establishing context (Claim 1 and Claim 13).

4. "Enhancing the VUE™ (Voice-User-Experience) Through Conversational Speech"

   • Full Citation: "Enhancing the VUE™ (Voice-User-Experience) Through Conversational Speech," by Tom Freeman and Larry Baldwin.
   • Publication/Filing Date: Not explicitly stated, but it is a published work incorporated by reference within the patent's detailed description.
   • Brief Description: This work describes how the free form voice search module 245, noise tolerance module 250, and context determination process 255 communicate with a voice search engine 225 that includes context domain agents 230 and vocabularies 235 to aid in interpreting utterances and generating responses.
   • Potentially Anticipates: This document broadly covers aspects of the "conversational speech engine" and its components, including free-form voice search, noise tolerance, and context determination, which are foundational to the cooperative conversational model described in both independent claims (Claim 1 and Claim 13). Since two of the inventors of 10,297,249 are also authors of this work, it likely represents foundational work that predates the priority date of the current patent.

It is important to note that the priority date for US10297249B2 is listed as October 16, 2006. Any prior art with an effective filing or publication date before this would be relevant for anticipation under 35 U.S.C. § 102. All listed references here have filing dates prior to October 16, 2006.