US Patent Issued to Compagnie Generale des Etablissements Michelin on Nov. 4 for "Heavy truck tire with shoulder rib sipe featuring bridging" (South Carolina Inventor)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 6 -- United States Patent no. 12,459,301, issued on Nov. 4, was assigned to Compagnie Generale des Etablissements Michelin (Clermont-Ferrand, France).

"Heavy truck tire with shoulder rib sipe featuring bridging" was invented by Stefan Voss (Greer, S.C.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The present invention provides for a heavy truck tire tread (12) with a plurality of sipes (20) in the shoulder rib (18) that extend from the shoulder edge (14) to the shoulder groove (16). Each one of the sipes (20) has a bottom (28) with a teardrop (30) located at the bottom, and the bottom (28) does not extend the same depth in the thickness direction across the entire lateral length of th...