US Patent Issued to International Business Machines on Feb. 17 for "Controlling private communication channels among participants of a virtual group setting" (Chinese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,556,656, issued on Feb. 17, was assigned to International Business Machines Corp. (Armonk, N.Y.).

"Controlling private communication channels among participants of a virtual group setting" was invented by Dong Chen (Beijing), Ming Lei Zhang (Beijing), Ting Ting Zhan (Beijing), Yuan Jie Zhang (Ningbo, China) and Yin Xi Guo (Beijing).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A computer-implemented method, according to one approach, includes: receiving a request to add a subset of participants on a group call to a private communication channel. The group call includes a shared communication channel extending between the participants, the shared communi...