US Patent Issued to Olympus Medical Systems on July 14 for "Endoscope bending operation mechanism and endoscope" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 14 -- United States Patent no. 12,678,033, issued on July 14, was assigned to Olympus Medical Systems Corp. (Tokyo).

"Endoscope bending operation mechanism and endoscope" was invented by Yuna Nakamura (Hachioji, Japan), Kei Sekiya (Sagamihara, Japan), Kyoko Iwaku (Hino, Japan), Giichi Kaneta (Musashino, Japan) and Hisanobu Suzuki (Hino, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An endoscope bending operation mechanism comprises an up-down bending operation knob (a left-right bending operation knob), an up-down bending pulley (a left-right bending pulley) supported for rotation by a pulley case, the up-down bending pulley is configured to move by an operation force from the up...