ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,359,283, issued on July 15, was assigned to HERAEUS DEUTSCHLAND GMBH & Co. KG (Hanau, Germany).

"Method for the production of a collector alloy comprising precious metal or of pure silver" was invented by Christoph Rohlich (Hanau, Germany), Bernhard Bauer-Siebenlist (Hanau, Germany), Holger Winkler (Hanau, Germany), Karl Bernhard Friedrich (Aachen, Germany) and Diana Caroline Vieten (Aachen, Germany).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method for producing a collector alloy comprising 25 to 100 wt % precious metal in total, comprising 0 to greater than97 wt % of the precious metal silver, 0 to 75 wt % of at least one precious metal selected ...