ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 15 -- United States Patent no. 12,663,063, issued on June 23, was assigned to GKN Automotive Ltd. (Birmingham, Great Britain).
"Differential apparatus" was invented by Isao Hirota (Tochigi, Japan) and Kazutaka Kawata (Tochigi, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A differential apparatus includes a differential case, a pinion gear that is rotatably supported in the differential case and revolves as the differential case rotates, and side gears that respectively mesh with the pinion gear. The side gears are relatively rotatable with each other. A first planar portion orthogonal to a rotation axis is provided on a back side each of the side gears. A second planar portion w...