ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,346,555, issued on July 1, was assigned to BYTEDANCE INC. (Wilmington, Del.).

"Method and system for facilitating consumer interactions for performing purchase commands" was invented by Sri Viswanath (Palo Alto, Calif.), Eric Hyche (Kingsport, Tenn.), Mihir Shah (San Francisco), Peter Bergstrom (Mountain View, Calif.), Michael Burton (San Francisco), Dor Levi (San Francisco), Fabio Sisinni (Mountain View, Calif.), Don Albert Chennavasin (Santa Clara, Calif.), Marius G. Ciocirlan (Mountain View, Calif.), Ben Kim (Sunnyvale, Calif.) and Riaz Rahim (San Francisco).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Embodiments provide a computer-executed method, ...