ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,359,718, issued on July 15, was assigned to TOYOTA JIDOSHA K.K. (Toyota, Japan).
"Control device and control method" was invented by Hidekazu Hirabayashi (Chiryu, Japan), Takayuki Shimauchi (Toyota, Japan) and Yuta Saito (Nisshin, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The control device controls a vehicle towing a trailer. The control device is configured to determine whether or not a user is present in the trailer when a shift range is in the parking range. The control device is configured to ignore a shift range switching operation by a driver when the shift range switching operation is performed while a user is present in the trailer."...