ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,287,677, issued on April 29, was assigned to Dell Products LP (Round Rock, Texas).

"System and method for supporting hardware components" was invented by Mark Hammond (Round Rock, Texas), James Frederic Mckinney (Leander, Texas), Scott Elvin Johnson (Round Rock, Texas) and Karl Isaac Hamand (Georgetown, Texas).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Methods, systems, and devices for providing computer implemented services are disclosed. To provide the computer implemented services, the quantity of hardware resources available for providing the computer implemented services may be modified. The quantity of hardware resources may be modified by addin...