ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,254,731, issued on March 18, was assigned to GRAPHEAL (Grenoble, France).

"Portable and single-use device for accessing an area with restricted access, associated access key generation system and associated access control method" was invented by Behnaz Djoharian (Biviers, France) and Vincent Bouchiat (Biviers, France).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The disclosure relates to a device for accessing an area with restricted access or an area to which access is controlled, comprising a support, a sensor and access control stage, the support comprising a portion to be discarded and a portion to be retained, the sensor being borne by the portio...