American Megatrends Assigned Patent

American Megatrends, Inc., Norcross, GA, has been assigned a patent (9,256,569) developed by Pancholi, Jay, Duluth, GA, Dhandapani, Kayalvizhi, Suwanee, GA, and Sivertsen, Clas Gerhard, Lilburn, GA, for a “monitoring and managing storage drives and performing backplane controller firmware using a USB interface.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Certain aspects relate to monitoring and managing storage drives installed on a backplane and performing backplane controller firmware update through a universal serial bus, (USB) interface. When the backplane controller is connected to a host computer via the USB interface, the backplane controller sends USB descriptors to the host computer through the USB interface such that the host computer recognizes the backplane controller as a specific human interface device, (HID) device based on the USB descriptors. Thus, the backplane controller and the host computer may transmit backplane drive management messages, such as the result to monitor and manage the storage drives, or the control commands and control data to monitor and manage the storage drives and to update the firmware of the backplane controller, as USB HID reports in a predefined format based on the USB descriptors.“

The patent application was filed on February 26, 2014 (14/190,937).