ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,277,120, issued on April 15, was assigned to Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Redmond, Wash.).

"System for creating and accessing digital cards stored in decentralized content storage" was invented by Salil Das (Seattle), Cezar Augusto Alevatto Guimaraes Neto (Boca Raton, Fla.), Peter Loren Engrav (Seattle), Brian Scott Krabach (Everett, Wash.), Deniz Cakirkaya (Seattle), Brian Charles Blomquist (Lynnwood, Wash.), Craig Thomas Targosz (Seattle) and Sarojini Garapati (Bellevue, Wash.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A reference to a digital item is stored as a digital card. The digital card can also be contained in, and/or refer to, other...