ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 23 -- United States Patent no. 12,423,679, issued on Sept. 23, was assigned to WELLS FARGO BANK N.A. (San Francisco).

"Digital asset vault" was invented by Todd Steven Biggs (Littleton, Colo.), Phillip H. Griffin (Raleigh, N.C.), Upul D. Hanwella (San Francisco), Mabel Oza (Skokie, Ill.), Luiz Silva (Pleasant Hill, Calif.), Jeff J. Stapleton (O'Fallon, Mo.), Richard Stec (Minneapolis), Kurt Paul Stevens (Lewisville, N.C.), Luis A. Suarez (Bolivia, N.C.) and Sean Xiang Zhang (Walnut Creek, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Securing digital assets in a vault that interfaces with multiple different third-party wallets to store keys/mnemonics. The vault interface accept...