ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 24 -- United States Patent no. 12,560,876, issued on Feb. 24, was assigned to CANON K.K. (Tokyo).
"Image forming apparatus" was invented by Tomoki Fujikawa (Shizuoka, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An image forming apparatus includes a control unit that controls a state of a restricting unit to switch between a restricted state in which a plurality of consumable units are restricted from being removed and an unrestricted state in which the plurality of consumable units are not restricted from being removed. In a first state in which a contract for a service for using the consumable unit of the specific type provided by a service provider is in effect, the control u...