US Patent Issued to Aristocrat Technologies on March 11 for "Gaming machine having a modifiable number of held wild reels and special symbols" (Australian Inventor)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,249,218, issued on March 11, was assigned to Aristocrat Technologies Inc. (Las Vegas).

"Gaming machine having a modifiable number of held wild reels and special symbols" was invented by Jason Meyer (Wyoming, Australia).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A gaming machine having a number of reels. Each of the reels includes at least one special symbol that in either in an active state or a normal state. Each of the reels is in either a held state or a symbol collection state indicative of a number of special symbols currently collected. During a game, when the number of special symbols of a reel reaches a predetermined number, the special symb...