ALEXANDRIA, Va., May 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,626,214, issued on May 12, was assigned to Federal Express Corp. (Memphis, Tenn.).

"Systems and methods for rule-driven management of sensor data across geographic areas and derived actions" was invented by Ole-Petter Skaaksrud (Lakeland, Tenn.) and Miley Ainsworth (Hernando, Miss.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The present disclosure relates to an information gathering method. The information gathering method includes identifying a location of a package, the location associated with one or more location-based restrictions on collecting data. The information gathering method also includes restricting access to sensor-collectable data asso...