ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 11 -- United States Patent no. 12,547,202, issued on Feb. 10, was assigned to Alps Alpine Co. Ltd. (Japan).
"Multi-directional input device" was invented by Fumitaka Seino (Miyagi-ken, Japan), Masatoshi Ono (Miyagi-ken, Japan), Toru Nishioka (Tokyo), Kazuhiko Sasaki (Miyagi-ken, Japan), Shuji Fujiwara (Miyagi-ken, Japan), Taiki Hagihara (Miyagi-ken, Japan) and Masaaki Mikawa (Miyagi-ken, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A multi-directional input device includes a housing, a control member to be tilted, a first interlock member having a first shaft support portion supported by the housing turnably about a first turn axis and is turned with a tilting operation of the c...