US Patent Issued to 7-Eleven on Jan. 13 for "Cup dispenser sensor for automatically generating refill alerts" (Texas Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Jan. 13 -- United States Patent no. 12,525,087, issued on Jan. 13, was assigned to 7-Eleven Inc. (Irving, Texas).

"Cup dispenser sensor for automatically generating refill alerts" was invented by Matthew O'Daniel Redmond (Denton, Texas) and John Robert Keller (Plano, Texas).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A system for providing a measure of a number of cups housed within a cup dispenser includes a sensor and a computing system. The cup dispenser includes a body configured to house a stack of cups, and a plunger configured to engage a first cup of the stack of cups and to bias the stack of cups toward a discharge opening defined by a first end of the body. The sensor is coupled ...