ALEXANDRIA, Va., Dec. 31 -- United States Patent no. 12,511,331, issued on Dec. 30, was assigned to D&M HOLDINGS INC. (Kanagawa, Japan).

"Shared context manager for cohabitating agents" was invented by Ann ThymeGobbel (Brisbane, Calif.), Robert M. Kilgore (Brooklyn, N.Y.) and David James (Waterbeach, Great Britain).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A user controls a computer application with a first multi-modal agent and a second multi modal agent. A shared context manager is configured to receive from the first agent a first intent having a first data field, and to receive from the second agent a second intent having a second data field. The shared context manager forms a modified second intent ...