ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,306,917, issued on May 20, was assigned to MAXELL LTD. (Kyoto, Japan).

"Information processing apparatus, user authentication network system, and user authentication method" was invented by Sadao Tsuruga (Kyoto, Japan), Yasunobu Hashimoto (Kyoto, Japan), Kazuhiko Yoshizawa (Kyoto, Japan) and Yoshinori Okada (Kyoto, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An information processing apparatus includes a voice input processing unit, a memory, and a controller. The voice input processing unit takes in voice of a user of the information processing apparatus to convert the voice into a first voice signal. The controller extracts a first voice feat...