ALEXANDRIA, Va., Dec. 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,491,000, issued on Dec. 9, was assigned to Cilag GmbH International (Zug, Switzerland).
"Knife drive mechanism" was invented by Austin Michael Fischer (Cincinnati), Christopher William Birri (West Chester, Ohio) and Andrew Kolpitcke (Cincinnati).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A surgical tool includes a drive housing, a drive input rotatably mounted to a bottom of the drive housing, a capstan assembly arranged within the drive housing to rotate a drive gear about a rotational axis and within a drive plane orthogonal to the rotational axis, a longitudinally driven gear engageable with the drive gear, and a drive rod operatively coupled to th...