ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 4 -- United States Patent no. 12,319,227, issued on June 3, was assigned to AUTOLIV DEVELOPMENT AB (Vargarda, Sweden).

"Seatbelt device" was invented by Ashwin Balaram (Karnataka, India), Abhijit Swain (Karnataka, India), Abhijeet Atwadkar (Karnataka, India), Iulian Rotariu (Kolln-Reisiek, Germany), Timo Nehrenheim (Hamburg, Germany) and Ole Scharnberg (Hamburg, Germany).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The invention relates to a seatbelt device (1) for motor vehicles comprising a belt buckle (2) with an insertion slot (3), a belt tongue (4) which can be plugged into the insertion slot (3) of the belt buckle (2), can be locked therein, and has a belt tongue main body (5) an...