ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,781,449, issued on Nov. 3, was assigned to NEC Corp. (Tokyo).

"Road inspection system, road inspection method and program recording medium" was invented by Natsumi Yokoyama (Tokyo), Shintaro Chiku (Tokyo), Yoko Tanaka (Tokyo), Yuki Tsuji (Tokyo), Kosei Kobayashi (Tokyo), Kazuki Ogata (Tokyo) and Kei Yanagisawa (Tokyo).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A road inspection system comprises: a means that creates a road inspection route including a first road managed by a first road manager and a second road managed by a second road manager which is different from the first road manager; a means that receives inspection data from a vehicle that has...