ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 2 -- United States Patent no. 12,265,246, issued on April 1, was assigned to MINEBEA MITSUMI Inc. (Nagano, Japan).
"Planar illumination device" was invented by Tomotaka Horikawa (Kitasaku-gun, Japan) and Kota Matsunaga (Kitasaku-gun, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A planar illumination device of an embodiment includes a light guide plate for emitting light incident from a light incident side surface from one principal surface of two principal surfaces, and a plurality of light sources arranged in a longitudinal direction of the light incident side surface and emitting light incident on the light incident side surface. The light sources include a light emitting ele...