ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 23 -- United States Patent no. 12,368,255, issued on July 22, was assigned to Dell Products LP (Round Rock, Texas).

"Configurable electrical card connector for connecting to cards of different lengths" was invented by Edward Davis Geist (Austin, Texas), Tung Yi Chen (New Taipei, Taiwan), Hsu-Min Jen (New Taipei, Taiwan), Shu-Yu Jiang (New Taipei, Taiwan) and Rong Yu Wang (New Taipei, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A card connector corresponding to a first card type associated with a plurality of electrical contacts for receiving cards corresponding to various card types, each card type associated with a set of electrical contacts fewer than, more than or the same ...