US Patent Issued to Ricoh on Sept. 29 for "Image forming apparatus" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 30 -- United States Patent no. 12,748,371, issued on Sept. 29, was assigned to Ricoh Co. Ltd. (Tokyo).

"Image forming apparatus" was invented by Takaaki Tawada (Kanagawa, Japan), Shotaro Hoshi (Kanagawa, Japan), Kazuhiko Watanabe (Kanagawa, Japan) and Hirofumi Fujii (Kanagawa, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An image forming apparatus includes an image forming unit, an image bearer movable in a moving direction, a transferor, a cleaner, a sensor, and circuitry. The circuitry controls the image forming unit to form multiple toner patches arranged at a first interval on the image bearer in an orthogonal direction orthogonal to the moving direction and controls the se...