ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 18 -- United States Patent no. 12,327,316, issued on June 10, was assigned to Japan Tobacco Inc (Tokyo).

"Communication assistance method, non-transitory computer readable storage medium, and communication server for assigning a virtual space" was invented by Masato Itabashi (Tokyo), Masayoshi Saruya (Tokyo), Miki Wakamatsu (Tokyo) and Masatoshi Senju (Tokyo).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "In a reception step, use information which is transmitted from a user terminal in the case where a flavor suction tool is used, and indicates that the flavor suction tool is used is received. In an allocation step, on the basis of the received use information, a virtual space is allocat...