ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,386,881, issued on Aug. 12, was assigned to Apple Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.).
"Synchronized shared playlists" was invented by Arvind S. Shenoy (San Jose, Calif.), Thomas M. Alsina (Saratoga, Calif.) and Paul C. Irvine (Mill Valley, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The present disclosure relates to synchronized sharing of playlists from a source client device to a listening client device. To facilitate synchronized sharing, a current playlist of one or more tracks of digital content is obtained from the source client device. A current playback location within the currently playing playlist is also obtained from the source client device...