ALEXANDRIA, Va., Jan. 29 -- United States Patent no. 12,209,981, issued on Jan. 28, was assigned to Mettler-Toledo GmbH (Greifensee, Switzerland).

"Method and device for sensory measurement of a material sample" was invented by Urs Jorimann (Bertschikon, Switzerland), Urs Wust (Hombrechtikon, Switzerland), Andreas Dangeli (Winterthur, Switzerland) and Moosa Abrahams (Greifensee, Switzerland).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "In association with a method and a device for sensory measurement of a material sample, a measurement curve is used to detect deviations from the regular measuring characteristics of the device. A corresponding file can be made available to a service technician for evaluation...