ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 25 -- United States Patent no. 12,481,963, issued on Nov. 25, was assigned to CISCO TECHNOLOGY INC. (San Jose, Calif.).

"Proactive scheduling of shared resources or responsibilities" was invented by Jay K. Johnston (Raleigh, N.C.), Magnus Mortensen (Cary, N.C.) and David C. White Jr. (St. Petersburg, Fla.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Presented herein are techniques associated with proactively scheduling shared resources or responsibilities among multiple users. In one example a method is provided that may include sharing masked calendar information between a first device of a first user and at least one second device of at least one second user based on the first devic...