ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 28 -- United States Patent no. 12,446,554, issued on Oct. 21, was assigned to PANASONIC INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MANAGEMENT Co. LTD. (Osaka, Japan).

"Pet status assessment system, pet camera, server, pet status assessment method, and program" was invented by Yuka Nakamura (Osaka, Japan), Hiroaki Omayu (Osaka, Japan), Yasushi Uesaka (Hyogo, Japan) and Masafumi Sato (Osaka, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A pet status assessment system includes an area detector, an information generator, and an assessor. The area detector detects, in image data, a specific area representing at least a part of appearance of a pet as a subject. The information generator generates pet infor...