ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,608,440, issued on April 21, was assigned to eBay Inc. (San Jose, Calif.).

"Sample delta monitoring" was invented by Keyu Nie (Mountain View, Calif.), Ted Tao Yuan (Cupertino, Calif.) and Bingquan Xu (San Jose, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Sample delta monitoring is described herein. In one or more implementations, first and second experimental groups are defined in a randomized controlled trial. A first set of data indicative of a first experimental group in the randomized controlled trial is received. A second set of data indicative of a second experimental group in the randomized controlled trial is received. Based on sample...