ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 25 -- United States Patent no. 12,342,242, issued on June 24, was assigned to Tile Inc. (San Mateo, Calif.).
"Tracking device search party management" was invented by Guilherme Chapiewski (Cupertino, Calif.) and Mayank Kumar (San Francisco).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A lost tracking device associated with a tracking system can be located by leveraging one or more community members by inviting these members to join a search party. Search party criteria can be identified and candidate search party members can be selected and invited based on the search party criteria. When invited candidate search party members accept the invitations, they are added to the search party....