ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,306,419, issued on May 20, was assigned to 3M Innovative Properties Co. (St. Paul, Minn.).
"Optical film" was invented by Tao Liu (Woodbury, Minn.), Gary T. Boyd (Woodbury, Minn.), Daniel J. Schmidt (Woodbury, Minn.), Caleb T. Nelson (McKinney, Texas), Owen M. Anderson (Minneapolis) and Tri D. Pham (Woodbury, Minn.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An optical film has a major surface including a plurality of microstructures. Each microstructure includes an optical facet and a sidewall meeting the optical facet at a ridge of the microstructure. The optical facet and the sidewall define an oblique angle therebetween. For each microstructure i...