ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,335,693, issued on June 17, was assigned to International Business Machines Corp. (Armonk, N.Y.).

"Computer technology for prediction of hearing issues" was invented by Phani Kumar V. U. Ayyagari (Hyderabad, India), Manish Anand Bhide (Hyderabad, India), Purnachandra Rao Jasti (Hyderabad, India), Madan K Chukka (Hyderabad, India) and Sai Prasanth Vuppala (Visakhapatnam, India).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Computer technology for determining a possibility of an emerging hearing issue in a user based on the user's auditory interactions with a mobile device (for example, a smartphone), a wearable computer device (for example, a smart watch...