ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,296,278, issued on May 13, was assigned to MATTEL INC. (El Segundo, Calif.).
"Toy vehicle track" was invented by Maxence Rodrigue Bilodeau (Marina Del Rey, Calif.), Giang-Son Quoc Nguyen (Buena Park, Calif.), Alex Au (Kowloon, Hong Kong), Gabriel De La Torre (Los Angeles), David Welby (Santa Monica, Calif.), Jung Jun Hwang (Inglewood, Calif.), Paul Schmid (Ojai, Calif.) and Gabriel Lopez (Los Angeles).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A toy vehicle track piece of present application includes one or more connectors. Thus, two track pieces can be connected directly to each other without any additional pieces (e.g., without separate connectors ...