ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,696,996, issued on Aug. 4, was assigned to Koninklijke Douwe Egberts B.V. (Utrecht, Netherlands).
"Apparatus and method for preparation of a beverage" was invented by Sebastian Mirbeth (Traunreut, Germany) and Paul Saxton (Banbury, Great Britain).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A beverage preparation machine (100) comprising: a brew head (101) for receiving in use a cartridge (200), the cartridge (200) being of a type that comprises one or more beverage ingredients and has a code (201) associated with the cartridge (200) for determining a standard set of brewing parameters; a code reader (104); an activation element (102); and a controller ...