ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 6 -- United States Patent no. 12,284,316, issued on April 22, was assigned to CenturyLink Intellectual Property LLC (Denver).

"Auto switch-call center-based automated interface with voice switches for voice service diagnostics and provisioning" was invented by Jaime D. Lemley (Apopka, Fla.) and David Stegeman (Olathe, Kan.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Novel tools and techniques are provided for implementing call center-based automated interface with voice switches for voice service diagnostics and provisioning. In various embodiments, in response to receiving a request by a call center user to access a voice service customer account, a computing system may access infor...