ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 25 -- United States Patent no. 12,340,357, issued on June 24, was assigned to Amazon Technologies Inc. (Seattle).
"In-facility item purchase" was invented by Shawn Bigger (Bellevue, Wash.), Yi Xiang (Seattle), Kerry Ann McGuire (Seattle), Caroline Hurd (Edmonds, Wash.), Raj Kumar (Redmond, Wash.), Kevin Kuehler (Seattle), Steven Zheng (Saratoga, Calif.), Mustafa Majeed (Mill Creek, Wash.) and Aarti Sundararajan (North Bend, Wash.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Described are systems and methods for in-facility purchase of items from a single seller when those items are offered for sale by multiple sellers. For example, a materials handling facility may include two or more...