ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 26 -- United States Patent no. 12,398,692, issued on Aug. 26, was assigned to TOYOTA JIDOSHA K.K. (Toyota, Japan).

"Aquatic wind power generation system" was invented by Tateru Fukagawa (Fujisawa, Japan), Hayato Masuki (Fuji, Japan) and Kazutaka Kimura (Mishima, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An aquatic wind power generation system includes: a hull that navigates on water; a power generation system that includes a kite connected to the hull via a tether, and repeats between a power generation mode, in which wind power is generated by an unwinding operation of the tether due to flight of the kite, and retraction mode, in which the tether is retracted by a winding op...