ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,248,605, issued on March 11, was assigned to Ridgeline Inc. (Incline Village, Nev.).

"Storing, reading, and encrypting personal identifiable information" was invented by Alex Daniel Ciampaglia (Incline Village, Nev.) and Wen Jie Zhou (Brooklyn, N.Y.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The present application discloses a method, system, and computer system for storing, reading and/or encrypting personal identifiable information (PII). The method includes obtaining PII data corresponding to a dataset, obtaining a PII key associated with the PII data, and storing, in the dataset, information pertaining to the PII key in association with the PII...