ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,317,380, issued on May 27, was assigned to MEKTEC Corp. (Tokyo).
"Cylindrical heater" was invented by Tatsuro Hayashi (Tokyo), Shota Seki (Tokyo), Hirokazu Iwaki (Tokyo) and Takashi Sasaki (Tokyo).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Provided is a tubular heater whose attachment process is facilitated and whose heating efficiency is high. Features of the tubular heater are that the tubular heater includes a tubular elastic body 200 and a flexible printed circuit board 100 provided integrally with the elastic body 200 and formed with a heating circuit and a heating unit 110 of the flexible printed circuit board 100 formed with the heating circui...