ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 23 -- United States Patent no. 12,367,009, issued on July 22, was assigned to Sonos Inc. (Goleta, Calif.).
"Media playback system with virtual line-in" was invented by Arthur L. Coburn IV (Lexington, Mass.) and Chris Kotowski (Boston).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Example systems and techniques disclosed herein facilitate interoperability between different media playback systems referred to herein as a virtual line-in (VLI) media playback system and a native playback system. When a VLI session is created by a VLI sender, a first native playback device can join a VLI group as a VLI receiver. As a VLI receiver, the first native playback device receives audio content and pl...