ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 18 -- United States Patent no. RE50,662, issued on Nov. 18, was assigned to Cable Retractors LLC (Cheney, Wash.).
"Compact high fidelity reel" was invented by John Arthur Hale (Cheney, Wash.) and Phillip Andrew Hale (Cheney, Wash.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A retractable cord reel houses contacts that connect autonomously when the user aligns the spool to lock it from retracting. The spool and housing contains high quality, sensitive contacts for high speed data and other critical signals that engage when indexed by the user. The design is flexible for adaptation to a variety of applications and scalable based on cable type and length as well as the number of contact...