ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,556,542, issued on Feb. 17, was assigned to MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING LLC (Redmond, Wash.).

"Secure resource authorization for external identities using remote principal objects" was invented by Charles Prakash Rao Dasari (Redmond, Wash.), Maksym Yaryn (Sammamish, Wash.), Debashis Choudhury (Redmond, Wash.) and Jeffrey A. Staiman (Bellevue, Wash.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Methods of secure resource authorization for external identities using remote principal objects are performed by systems and devices. An external entity creates a user group and defines entitlements to an owning entity's secure resource as a set of permissions...