ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,358,741, issued on July 15, was assigned to CANON K.K. (Tokyo).
"Sheet feeding apparatus, image forming system, and image forming apparatus" was invented by Isao Kannari (Saitama, Japan) and Hiroshi Saito (Ibaraki, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A sheet feeding apparatus includes a tray configured to support a sheet, a lifting unit configured to raise and lower the tray, an air blowing unit configured to blow air to a side edge of the sheet supported by the tray to float the sheet, an attraction and conveyance unit configured to execute a feeding operation of attracting and feeding the floated sheet, an upper surface detection unit...