ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 23 -- United States Patent no. 12,367,312, issued on July 22, was assigned to Google LLC (Mountain View, Calif.).

"Distributing digital components while securing user data" was invented by Gang Wang (Frederick, Md.), Chin-Yet Lin (San Jose, Calif.), Rishav Anand (Mountain View, Calif.), Shruti Murali (Sunnyvale, Calif.) and Tenghui Liu (Sunnyvale, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for distributing digital component while securing user data are described. In one aspect, a method includes receiving, by a multi-platform server and from a client device, a request for a digi...