ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 15 -- United States Patent no. 12,662,794, issued on June 23.

"Earth scraper" was invented by Ian Davies (Hamilton, New Zealand).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Described is an earth scraper including multiple buckets to receive earth scraped by a scraper blade. A lifter mechanism is provided to move one of the buckets between elevated and lowered positions."

The patent was filed on Dec. 1, 2021, under Application No. 18/039,808.

*For further information, including images, charts and tables, please visit: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=12662794&OS=12662794&RS=1266...