ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,581,298, issued on March 17, was assigned to LG Electronics Inc. (Seoul, South Korea).

"Method and apparatus for authenticating user equipment in wireless communication system" was invented by Dongjoo Kim (Seoul, South Korea) and Anbin Kim (Seoul, South Korea).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Disclosed herein is a method for authenticating a UE in a wireless communication system, including: receiving, by a relay UE, a direct communication request message from a remote UE; identifying, by the relay UE, authentication for the remote UE based on the direct communication request message; and transmitting, by the relay UE, a direct communicatio...