US Patent Issued to Panasonic Intellectual Property Management on June 23 for "Light shielding unit and lens barrel equipped with the same" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 15 -- United States Patent no. 12,663,693, issued on June 23, was assigned to Panasonic Intellectual Property Management Co. Ltd. (Osaka, Japan).

"Light shielding unit and lens barrel equipped with the same" was invented by Tetsuya Uno (Osaka, Japan), Satoshi Fukuda (Osaka, Japan) and Hiroki Miyaji (Kochi, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An aperture unit comprises a base plate, a cover, a plurality of movable blades, a drive ring, a drive motor, and rotation shafts. The movable blades are disposed between the base plate and the cover, and adjust the amount of light passing through by varying the size of the opening by opening and closing operations. The drive ring i...