ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,248,686, issued on March 11, was assigned to Dell Products LP (Round Rock, Texas).

"Intent-driven storage tiers that protect and relocate assets" was invented by Anand Rudrabhatla (Pleasanton, Calif.), George Mathew (Belmont, Calif.) and Jehuda Shemer (Kfar Saba, Israel).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "System creates mapping of storage intent, defined for digital asset, to primary storage tier, of primary storage tiers in primary protection storage system, that matches storage intent. System receives request to store copy of digital asset, and stores the copy with storage intent in primary storage tier, based on mapping of storage intent ...