ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,578,833, issued on March 17, was assigned to Privacy Vaults Online Inc. (Dumfries, Va.).

"Systems and methods for facilitating interactions between expert and non-expert users" was invented by Jodell Seagrave (Dumfries, Va.), Steve Snyder (San Francisco), Allen Goldblatt (San Francisco), Marshall Raskind (Bainbridge Island, Wash.), Bob Day (Seattle), Lisa Litsey (San Francisco) and Mark W. Grayson (Fairfield, Conn.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A virtual environment may be provided to facilitate education and knowledge gathering by users. The users may include children, youth, and/or other users. The users may be enabled to form connec...