ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 28 -- United States Patent no. 12,695,944, issued on July 28, was assigned to The Nielsen Co. (US) LLC (New York).

"Methods and apparatus of media device detection for minimally invasive media meters" was invented by Alexander Topchy (New Port Richey, Fla.) and Venugopal Srinivasan (Tarpon Springs, Fla.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Methods, apparatus, systems and articles of manufacture are disclosed for media crediting and, more particularly, methods and apparatus of media device detection for media meters. An example computing system disclosed herein to detect media devices presenting media comprises a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, having stored th...