Yahoo settles speech recognition suit

Yahoo has settled a trade secrets lawsuit with Nuance Communications, one of the leading speech recognition software companies. Yahoo, the suit claimed, "gutted" Nuance's research and development unit, when it hired away 13 of its engineers.

Terms were not disclosed.

Long the next big thing, speech recognition is becoming more mainstream due to advances in the technology and a change in where and how the technology gets used. All the search giants are looking at ways to incorporate it into their offerings. Kai-Fu Lee, the engineer that Google lured from Microsoft, has conducted extensive research in the field.