ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,688,628, issued on July 21, was assigned to Meta Platforms Inc. (Menlo Park, Calif.).

"Avatar posting and customization" was invented by David Ray Chen (San Diego), Jay Quin (San Francisco), Seth Lee Weisfeld (Brooklyn, N.Y.), Junian Ioffe (New York), Neeraj Dinesh Khurana (New York), Jamie Robert Barnes (Wembely, Great Britain), Michael Groseclose (Mission Viejo, Calif.), Gian Paolo Pile Cruz (San Mateo, Calif.) and Xiao Chen (Sunnyvale, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Systems, methods, and non-transitory computer readable media are configured to perform operations comprising providing a plurality of avatar poses associated with a...