ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 18 -- United States Patent no. 12,326,682, issued on June 10, was assigned to KYOCERA Document Solutions Inc. (Osaka, Japan).

"Image forming apparatus" was invented by Sadanori Nakae (Osaka, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An image forming apparatus performs a transfer residual toner collection operation including a toner adhesion step of allowing transfer residual toner to temporarily adhere to the collecting roller during execution of image forming operation, a toner moving step of moving the transfer residual toner adhered on the collecting roller to an image carrier after the image forming operation is finished, and a toner collecting step of moving the transfer...