ALEXANDRIA, Va., May 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,621,353, issued on May 5, was assigned to ICA AI Inc. (Boca Raton, Fla.).

"System and method for automated affinity-based network expansion through intelligent relationship discovery and compatibility matching" was invented by Raymond J. Sheppard (Spring Hill, Fla.), Alan W. McCord (Forney, Texas) and Gustavo Manuel Damil Marin (Point Roberts, Wash.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A system for affinity-based user acquisition is disclosed. An affinity analysis agent analyzes affinity patterns from existing customers and automatically identifies potential referrals without accessing message content. A relationship mapping agent calculates rel...