ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 20 -- United States Patent no. 12,395,242, issued on Aug. 19, was assigned to Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Redmond, Wash.).

"Optical transport terminal node architecture with free space optical backplane" was invented by Yawei Yin (Redmond, Wash.), Binbin Guan (Issaquah, Wash.), Jamie Gaudette (Kirkland, Wash.) and Denizcan Billor (Seattle).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Systems and methods are provided for implementing a free space optical backplane structure including a body and a plurality of mirrors. The body includes a chamber, a front panel, and a plurality of apertures disposed in the front panel, the plurality of apertures including a first set of apertures...