ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,315,245, issued on May 27, was assigned to THALES (Courbevoie, France).

"Method and device for determining altitude obstacles" was invented by Elodie Saint-Marc (Toulouse, France), David Martinez (Toulouse, France), Arnaud Jerez (Toulouse, France) and Roman Pasquette (Toulouse, France).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The invention relates to a method and a device for determining altitude obstacles. The method includes, for a given geographical area, obtaining (50) digital aerial images of portions of terrain of said geographical area from at least one digital aerial image source, forming a set of digital aerial images covering said geograp...