ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,687,759, issued on July 21, was assigned to Fujikura Ltd. (Tokyo).
"Optical switch and switching method" was invented by Yuichiro Kunai (Tokyo), Hiroyuki Kusaka (Tokyo) and Masahiro Kashiwagi (Tokyo).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An optical switch that switches an optical path of signal light obtained by modulating carrier light by a control signal and a data signal, includes an optical modulation element that reflects or refracts the signal light and includes cells each having an independently set phase modulation amount with which the signal light is emitted in a direction corresponding to a ratio of a period of the control signal to a...