ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,229,142, issued on Feb. 18, was assigned to The MITRE Corp. (McLean, Va.).

"Systems and methods for analyzing distributed system data streams using declarative specification, detection, and evaluation of happened-before relationships" was invented by Suresh K. Damodaran (Acton, Mass.), Richard A. Moffitt (McLean, Va.), Richard B. Lamourine (Medford, Mass.) and Joshua D. Guttman (Newton, Mass.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Predefined patterns are detected in streaming data being transmitted in a distributed computing system that contains a plurality of computing devices wherein the plurality of computing devices are collectively configur...