ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,226,999, issued on Feb. 18, was assigned to KONICA MINOLTA INC. (Tokyo).
"Image forming apparatus and image forming method" was invented by Kei Yuasa (Sagamihara, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An image forming apparatus includes an image former and a flattener. The image former forms an image on a recording medium. The flattener is disposed upstream of the image former in a conveying direction of the recording medium, and flattens the recording medium before the image former forms the image on the recording medium."
The patent was filed on Sept. 22, 2022, under Application No. 17/934,335.
*For further information, including imag...