ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,296,789, issued on May 13, was assigned to Rivian IP Holdings LLC (Plymouth, Mich.).

"Multi-purpose vehicle tonneau cover" was invented by Kaitlyn Benoit (Newport Beach, Calif.), Austin Lee Frederickson (Carlsbad, Calif.) and Christian V. Elder (Irvine, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A vehicle accessory system includes a tonneau cover to be adaptably disposed onto a vehicle in a first configuration and a second configuration. In the first configuration, the tonneau cover retractably overlaps a cargo area of the vehicle, in which the tonneau cover is attached to a perimeter of the cargo area via an attachment mechanism configured t...