ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,306,555, issued on May 20, was assigned to KONICA MINOLTA INC. (Tokyo).
"Image forming apparatus and determination method" was invented by Junji Murauchi (Toyokawa, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An electrophotographic image forming apparatus includes: a replacement detector that detects that a toner bottle has been replaced; a developer that develops an electrostatic latent image by using a toner supplied from the toner bottle and stored; a fog detector that detects a fog amount; and a determiner that determines whether or not the detected fog amount continuously exceeds a predetermined threshold value in a state where a toner sup...