ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 18 -- United States Patent no. 12,327,550, issued on June 10, was assigned to Amazon Technologies Inc. (Seattle).

"Intelligent device grouping" was invented by Zeya Chen (Charlottesville, Va.), Charles Edwin Ashton Brett (Seattle), Jay Patel (Seattle), Lizhen Peng (Seattle), Aniruddha Basak (Seattle), Hongyang Wang (Seattle), Yunfeng Jiang (Seattle), Sven Eberhardt (Seattle), Akshay Kumar (Seattle), William Evan Welbourne (Seattle) and Sara Hillenmeyer (Seattle).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Systems and methods for intelligent device grouping are disclosed. An environment, such as a home, may have a number of voice-enabled devices and accessory devices that may be contro...