ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,346,040, issued on July 1, was assigned to KYOCERA Document Solutions Inc. (Osaka, Japan).
"Image forming apparatus" was invented by Shinobu Yoshioku (Osaka, Japan), Keiko Morita (Osaka, Japan), Tetsuya Maeda (Osaka, Japan) and Ryota Maeda (Osaka, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A target selection portion selects one target attachment portion out of a plurality of attachment portions, and selects, when a detection state regarding a target storage unit attached to the target attachment portion out of a plurality of developer storage units changes from a developer-remaining state to a developer-empty state, a new target attachment port...