US Patent Issued to SHIMANO on May 5 for "Rear sprocket" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., May 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,617,491, issued on May 5, was assigned to SHIMANO INC. (Sakai, Japan).

"Rear sprocket" was invented by Hiroshi Fujita (Sakai City, Japan), Yusuke Oda (Sakai City, Japan) and Hiroaki Uemura (Sakai City, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A rear sprocket includes a sprocket body and a plurality of sprocket teeth. The plurality of sprocket teeth includes a first upshifting facilitation tooth, a second upshifting facilitation tooth, a third upshifting facilitation tooth and an upshifting initiation tooth. The upshifting initiation tooth is adjacent to the third upshifting facilitation tooth at an upstream side of the third upshifting facilit...