ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,286,732, issued on April 29, was assigned to KANEKA Corp. (Osaka, Japan).
"Pile fabric and manufacturing method therefor" was invented by Yusuke Hirai (Hyogo, Japan), Nobutaka Taoka (Hyogo, Japan), Hiroyuki Shinbayashi (Hyogo, Japan) and Hiroyuki Tokumoto (Osaka, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A pile fabric includes a long pile portion and a short pile portion. An average pile length of the long pile portion differs from an average pile length of the short pile portion by 2 mm or more. The long pile portion contains crimped polyester-based fibers in an amount of 60% by weight or more. The short pile portion contains crimped polyeste...