ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,698,040, issued on Aug. 4, was assigned to NIPPON STEEL Corp. (Tokyo).
"Automotive exterior component" was invented by Yasunori Sawa (Tokyo), Ryuichi Nishimura (Tokyo) and Koichi Hamada (Tokyo).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An automobile hood 1 has a first-direction joint row 30 in which a plurality of joints 20 are arranged at an interval from each other in a cross direction X, and a second-direction joint row 40 in which a plurality of the joints 20 are arranged at an interval from each other in a longitudinal direction Y. A curvature 1/R1 in a direction along the first-direction joint row 30 in a region of the outer panel 3 correspondi...