ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,307,311, issued on May 20, was assigned to Hallmark Cards Inc. (Kansas City, Mo.).

"Collaborative asset generation and communication" was invented by Kevin Weldon Swanson (Prairie Village, Kan.), Jennifer Richards Garbos (Kansas City, Mo.), David Galen Saville (Shawnee, Kan.), Krista Masilionis (Leawood, Kan.) and Stephanie Young (Overland Park, Kan.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The technology described herein allows a sender to initiate generation of a digital asset, which may be a video generated by merging videos provided by a group of users. The technology can facilitate the generation and collection of digital assets, such as vide...