ALEXANDRIA, Va., Dec. 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,500,945, issued on Dec. 16, was assigned to Snap Inc. (Santa Monica, Calif.).

"Virtual interaction session to facilitate real-time communication between multiple users" was invented by Brian Anthony Smith (New York), Yu Jiang Tham (Los Angeles), Rajan Vaish (Beverly Hills, Calif.) and Hemant Surale (Waterloo, Canada).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Aspects of the present disclosure involve a system comprising a computer-readable storage medium storing at least one program, method, and user interface to facilitate augmented reality based communication between multiple users over a network. Session configuration data including configuration ...