ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 31 -- United States Patent no. 12,591,542, issued on March 31, was assigned to BEIJING BAIDU NETCOM SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY Co. LTD. (China).

"Directory metadata operation method and apparatus, electronic device, and readable storage medium" was invented by Biao Cao (Beijing), Jielong Jian (Beijing) and Yan Xing (Beijing).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A directory metadata operation method, including: in response to receiving a directory query request, obtaining a query path carried therein; obtaining a prebuilt prefix directory data table and a prebuilt full load directory data table, where a key of the prefix directory data table is a prefix path of the directory metadata, ...