Obviousness

The obviousness of US Patent 9734825 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 can be analyzed by considering the state of the art prior to its priority date of June 3, 2002. The patent explicitly states that its disclosure is a continuation of a chain of applications, including U.S. Pat. No. 8,731,929, U.S. Pat. No. 7,502,738, U.S. Pat. No. 7,398,209, and U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60/384,388, all of which are incorporated by reference in their entirety [cite: US9734825, Cross-Reference to Related Applications]. These incorporated disclosures, particularly the earliest ones (U.S. Pat. No. 7,398,209 and U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60/384,388), serve as highly relevant prior art for the claims of US9734825.

Level of Ordinary Skill in the Art (PHOSITA):
A person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA) in June 2002 would be an individual with several years of experience in software development, natural language processing (NLP), speech recognition, and artificial intelligence, particularly in the domain of conversational AI or intelligent agent systems. This PHOSITA would be familiar with integrating various software modules, implementing decision-making processes under uncertainty (e.g., probabilistic or fuzzy logic), and designing user feedback mechanisms for disambiguation.

Scope and Content of the Prior Art:

1. US 7,398,209 (and its provisional 60/384,388): As a direct parent/ancestor application incorporated by reference, US 7,398,209 (issued July 8, 2008, but claiming priority to June 3, 2002) would have disclosed the fundamental architecture and methods for a speech-based natural language query and response system. This includes:

   • Receiving natural language utterances from a user [cite: US9734825, FIG. 3, 302].
   • Parsing the utterance to determine an approximate meaning [cite: US9734825, FIG. 3, 304].
   • The concept of organizing domain-specific behavior and information into "agents" (FIG. 2, 106, 156) [cite: US9734825, Description]. The title of a later parent, US 8,731,929, explicitly refers to "Agent Architecture for Determining Meanings of Natural Language Utterances" [cite: US9734825, Cross-Reference to Related Applications], indicating this was a core aspect of the family's disclosure.
   • Utilizing user profiles, context, and domain-specific information to process queries and commands [cite: US9734825, Summary of the Invention, Description].
   • Generating and executing machine-processable queries/commands [cite: US9734825, FIG. 3, 306, 308].
   • Generating and presenting natural language responses or actions [cite: US9734825, FIG. 3, 312].

2. General Knowledge in the Art (as acknowledged by US9734825):

   • Speech recognition had "steadily improved in accuracy" and was used in various applications [cite: US9734825, Background of the Related Art].
   • Natural language processing had been applied to parsing speech queries [cite: US9734825, Background of the Related Art].
   • Existing systems struggled to provide a "complete environment" for natural language speech queries and natural-sounding responses [cite: US9734825, Background of the Related Art].
   • The problem of ambiguity in natural language utterances and the necessity for clarification from users were known challenges in NLP systems [cite: US9734825, Summary of the Invention].
   • The use of scoring systems and confidence levels for interpreting ambiguous or uncertain input was a known technique in fields like pattern recognition and AI to improve reliability.

Obviousness Analysis - Claims 1, 11, and 18:

The independent claims (Claim 1, 11, and 18) of US9734825 describe a system and method for determining a domain for a natural language utterance, invoking a domain agent, and processing the utterance to generate a response or action, including steps for handling low confidence in domain determination by requesting user verification.

Combination of References: US 7,398,209 (or the earlier 60/384,388 provisional application) in view of the general knowledge in the art.

Motivation to Combine:
The explicit motivation for a PHOSITA to combine these elements is clearly articulated within the US9734825 patent itself: to "overcome these and other drawbacks of prior systems" and to achieve a "complete speech-based information query, retrieval, presentation and command environment" that "makes maximum use of context, prior information, domain knowledge, and user specific profile data" [cite: US9734825, Summary of the Invention]. The background of the patent highlights that "current systems are generally unable to provide a complete environment for users to make natural language speech queries and receive natural sounding responses," providing a clear impetus to improve existing solutions [cite: US9734825, Background of the Related Art].

Application to Claims:

• Receiving and Parsing Utterances, and Invoking Domain Agents: The foundational steps of receiving and parsing natural language utterances, and invoking domain-specific agents, are comprehensively disclosed in US 7,398,209 and its parent applications (which focus on "Agent Architecture" and "Responding to Natural Language Speech Utterance"). A PHOSITA, building upon the system detailed in US 7,398,209, would find it obvious to implement these core functionalities.
• Determining Domain with Real-time Scoring and User Verification (Core of Claims 1, 11, 18):
  • The patent states that the system "may determine the mostly likely context or domain for a user's question or command, for example, by using a real-time scoring system or other technique" [cite: US9734825, Summary of the Invention]. Given the general knowledge of NLP and AI systems prior to 2002, applying scoring mechanisms (such as probabilistic or fuzzy reasoning, also mentioned in the patent [cite: US9734825, Summary of the Invention]) to determine the most likely domain or context for an ambiguous natural language input would have been a well-known engineering approach to enhance system accuracy.
  • Furthermore, the patent also states, "If the confidence level of the domain or context score is not high enough to ensure a reliable response, the system can request that the user verify the question or command is correctly understood" [cite: US9734825, Summary of the Invention]. This approach of requesting user clarification when the system's confidence in its interpretation is low was a recognized technique in human-computer interaction and expert systems to handle inherent ambiguities in natural language and improve robustness and user experience. It would have been obvious for a PHOSITA to incorporate such an interactive verification step into the system described in US 7,398,209 to address the known problem of ambiguity in natural language queries and improve the "natural environment" and "robustness to partial failure" objectives of the invention [cite: US9734825, Summary of the Invention].

Therefore, a PHOSITA, motivated to create a more "complete" and "natural" speech-based interaction system as desired in the art, would have readily combined the detailed system architecture and agent-based processing disclosed in US 7,398,209 (and its ancestral applications) with common knowledge of applying scoring systems for disambiguation and implementing user verification steps for low-confidence interpretations. This combination would lead directly to the features claimed in US9734825, rendering them obvious.