US Patent Issued to Ricoh on Sept. 8 for "Image forming apparatus" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 8 -- United States Patent no. 12,730,395, issued on Sept. 8, was assigned to Ricoh Co. Ltd. (Tokyo).

"Image forming apparatus" was invented by Yusuke Mitani (Kanagawa, Japan) and Shotaro Hoshi (Kanagawa, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An image forming apparatus includes an image bearer, a transfer member, a cleaning member, and a control unit. The transfer member contacts the image bearer to form a transfer nip and transfer a toner image on the image bearer to a recording medium at the transfer nip. The cleaning member cleans a surface of the image bearer. The control unit executes a cleaning operation of moving an extraneous matter adhering to the transfer member...