US Patent Issued to Ricoh on Sept. 1 for "Image forming apparatus" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 1 -- United States Patent no. 12,724,360, issued on Sept. 1, was assigned to Ricoh Co. Ltd. (Tokyo).

"Image forming apparatus" was invented by Manabu Fujisaki (Kanagawa, Japan), Eiji Tsuchida (Kanagawa, Japan) and Ryoma Ikemoto (Kanagawa, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An image forming apparatus includes a toner container housing, an image forming device, a tuning fork, a vibration generator, a communication circuit, and a terminal. The toner container housing houses a toner bottle storing toner. The toner bottle includes an electrode on a surface of the toner bottle. The image forming device receives the toner in the toner bottle to form a toner image. The vibrat...