ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 26 -- United States Patent no. 12,260,237, issued on March 25, was assigned to MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING LLC (Redmond, Wash.).

"Container management system with a layout manager system" was invented by John Andrew Starks (Seattle), Scott A. Brender (Kirkland, Wash.), Shaheed Gulamabbas Chagani (Redmond, Wash.) and Ping Xie (Redmond, Wash.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Methods, systems, and computer storage media for providing a set of common flat files in a composite image that can be mounted as a container (i.e. composite container) to support isolation and interoperation of computing resources. Container management is provided for a container management system b...