ALEXANDRIA, Va., Dec. 2 -- United States Patent no. 12,489,678, issued on Dec. 2, was assigned to DISH Network LLC (Englewood, Colo.).

"Voice command integration for local network connected devices" was invented by Anand Tiwari (Highlands Ranch, Colo.) and David Innes (Littleton, Colo.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Various arrangements for facilitating smart television content receivers in a local network are provided. In an example, a secondary television receiver creates voice data based on a spoken voice command by a user and transmits the voice data to a primary television receiver. In response, the primary television receiver transmits data based on the voice data to a voice processing ...