ALEXANDRIA, Va., Jan. 13 -- United States Patent no. 12,523,960, issued on Jan. 13, was assigned to Canon K.K. (Tokyo).
"Image forming apparatus and image forming system" was invented by Masahide Hirai (Shizuoka, Japan) and Shun-Ichi Ebihara (Shizuoka, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An image forming apparatus includes a cartridge and a main assembly. The main assembly includes an acquiring portion, a switching mechanism, a detecting portion, and a controller. The controller controls the switching mechanism so that in a first period until an acquisition value on a use amount of the cartridge reaches a threshold, switching from the restricted state to the non-restricted state is not permi...