ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,256,024, issued on March 18, was assigned to Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Redmond, Wash.).
"Device provisioning" was invented by Alessandro Contenti (Clyde Hill, Wash.), Stefan Thom (Snohomish, Wash.) and Torsten Stein (Snohomish, Wash.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A device is equipped with a public/private key pair. The private key is stored in a secure location on the device and the public key is utilized to track ownership of the device by a manufacturer, vendor, and/or one or more provisioning services. When a user purchases the device, a transaction involving the public key associated with the device and the user is record...