ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,609,999, issued on April 21, was assigned to Cable Television Laboratories Inc. (Louisville, Colo.).

"Systems and methods for universal layer 2 messaging" was invented by Yuan Tian (Broomfield, Colo.), Darshak Thakore (Broomfield, Colo.), Massimiliano Pala (Denver) and Tao Wan (Ottawa).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A transmitting communication device is provided, and includes a processor and a memory. The memory has computer-executable instructions stored therein, which, when executed by the processor, cause the transmitting communication device to generate at least one layer 2 message frame for delivery to a remote receiving device ove...