ALEXANDRIA, Va., Dec. 31 -- United States Patent no. 12,513,596, issued on Dec. 30, was assigned to ZTE Corp. (Shenzhen, China).

"Systems and methods for relay services" was invented by Boyuan Zhang (Shenzhen, China), Mengzhen Wang (Shenzhen, China) and Lin Chen (Shenzhen, China).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Presented are systems, methods, apparatuses, or computer-readable media for relay service. A second wireless communication device in a vicinity of a first wireless communication device may receive information to be used for selection of a relay device. The second wireless communication device may determine whether to wirelessly connect with the first wireless communication device as the ...