ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,540,022, issued on Feb. 3, was assigned to CONTEMPORARY AMPEREX TECHNOLOGY (HONG KONG) Ltd. (Hong Kong).

"Protective apparatus and transport apparatus" was invented by Lei Zhang (Ningde, China), Xiong He (Ningde, China), Jun Ming (Ningde, China) and Tao Du (Ningde, China).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A protective apparatus configured to protect electrode plates includes a support assembly configured to support a roll around which the electrode plates are wound, and a damping assembly. A top of the damping assembly is fixed to a bottom of the support assembly, and a bottom of the damping assembly is configured to be fixed to a base plate ...