ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 28 -- United States Patent no. 12,457,207, issued on Oct. 28, was assigned to Just One Technologies LLC (Charlottesville, Va.).

"Systems and methods for phone number certification and verification" was invented by Benjamin Montgomery (San Diego) and William W. Smith (Charlottesville, Va.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Methods, systems, apparatuses, and computer-readable storage mediums are described for issuing digital certificates to phone numbers and verifying phone numbers based on the digital certificates. For instance, a client may request from a certificate authority a digital certificate to be associated with the client's phone number. The certificate authority is...