US Patent Issued to NIDEC SANKYO, PANASONIC AUTOMOTIVE SYSTEMS on May 5 for "Lens unit" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., May 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,619,047, issued on May 5, was assigned to NIDEC SANKYO Corp. (Nagano, Japan) and PANASONIC AUTOMOTIVE SYSTEMS Co. LTD. (Kanagawa, Japan).

"Lens unit" was invented by Yasuo Tsuruoka (Nagano, Japan), Akinori Yamamoto (Nagano, Japan), Katsumi Umeda (Osaka, Japan), Masanori Tanikawa (Osaka, Japan) and Shinya Okada (Osaka, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A lens unit 1 includes a plurality of lenses aligned in a row along an optical axis L and a lens holder 2. A transparent conductive film 16, which functions as a heater, is disposed on an image-side lens surface 12 of the first lens L1 disposed the closest to an object side La. A flexible ...