ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 25 -- United States Patent no. 12,342,157, issued on June 24, was assigned to Meta Platforms Inc. (Menlo Park, Calif.).
"Social audio streaming" was invented by Sriram Srinivasan (Sammamish, Wash.), Yuchen Huang (Sunnyvale, Calif.), Ajitesh Chandak (Mountain View, Calif.) and Mykola Lando (Bellevue, Wash.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Systems and methods for social audio streaming may include (1) configuring, for a user participating in a media call with a group of additional users, a virtual visual surface that includes (i) an on-screen media call interface, presented within a viewable area of a display element of a device of the user, with a first set of user tiles, a...