ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 7 -- United States Patent no. 12,596,989, issued on April 7, was assigned to BANDAI Co. LTD. (Tokyo).
"Article supply device and article supply system" was invented by Hajime Kondo (Tokyo), Nobuo Kurokawa (Tokyo), Hiroki Kobayashi (Tokyo) and Kenichi Minagawa (Tokyo).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "[Problem] To provide an article supply device capable of substantially eliminating inconveniences caused by a sold-out state. [Solution] An article supply device 100 comprises: an article supply means (an article supply unit 108, etc.) capable of supplying articles AR in an article storage unit 102 by applying a supply operation to a supply operation unit 103; and a sold-out st...