ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 20 -- United States Patent no. 12,390,052, issued on Aug. 19.

"Automatic or mechanized food-process lines" was invented by Robert G. Nothum Jr. (Willard, Mo.) and Ryan D. Nothum (Springfield, Mo.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An improvement for automatic/mechanized food-process lines pertains to racking provisions for assembling, dis-assembling and re-assembling numerous separate machines that form to make up the line. That is, one machine can be swapped out for a different machine in order to cause a change in the output food product pieces. For example, a swapped in machine may give a different coating to the food product pieces (eg., breading vs. Panko) or run food p...