ALEXANDRIA, Va., May 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,628,212, issued on May 12, was assigned to Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. (Shenzhen, China).

"Neighborhood aware network-based device connection method and device" was invented by Chao Yang (Nanjing, China), Zhongyin Jiang (Nanjing, China), Bo Ling (Shenzhen, China) and Keyang Yin (Nanjing, China).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "This application provides network-based device connection methods and devices. One method includes: receiving a first broadcast message from a second device and a second broadcast message from a third device, in response to determining that a quantity of available Wi-Fi connections of the second device is not greater ...