ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,606,287, issued on April 21, was assigned to YAMAHA HATSUDOKI K.K. (Shizuoka, Japan).
"Outboard motor and marine vessel" was invented by Kimitaka Saruwatari (Shizuoka, Japan) and Tomohiro Hagi (Shizuoka, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An outboard motor includes a steering mechanism including a pinion located in a central portion of an outboard motor body in a right-left direction and operable to rotate together with the outboard motor body, a rack operable to linearly move to rotate the pinion, and a rack position detector on a first side of the rack opposite to the pinion to detect a position of the rack."
The patent was filed o...