ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 15 -- United States Patent no. 12,663,278, issued on June 23, was assigned to Toyota Jidosha K.K. (Toyota, Japan).

"Systems and methods for real-time data coverage optimization" was invented by Jan Falkowski (Seattle), James Peter Biagioni (Seattle) and Eitan Gilad Mendelowitz (Northampton, Mass.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Systems and methods for real-time map data coverage optimization are disclosed. A system includes one or more processors configured to determine a real-time map data collection coverage in an interested region, wherein real-time map data are collected by one or more consumer vehicles at locations of the consumer vehicles, determine whether one or m...