ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,226,281, issued on Feb. 18, was assigned to ALIGN TECHNOLOGY INC. (San Jose, Calif.).

"Flexible 3D printed orthodontic device with attachment supports" was invented by Siobhan O'Leary (Santa Clara, Calif.), Peter Webber (San Mateo, Calif.), Jun Sato (San Jose, Calif.), Crystal Tjhia (Sunnyvale, Calif.), Jessica H. Schiltz (San Jose, Calif.), Jeremy Riley (Mountain View, Calif.), Ken Wu (San Jose, Calif.), Kangning Su (Arlington, Va.), Yuxiang Wang (Newark, Calif.), Zhaonan Sun (Charlottesville, Va.) and Andrei Soldatov (Santa Clara, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A dental attachment placement device comprises a plurality of articu...