ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 4 -- United States Patent no. 12,317,987, issued on June 3, was assigned to MIZUNO Corp. (Osaka, Japan).

"Shoulder belt and bag" was invented by Arata Kamo (Osaka, Japan), Yuki Yamada (Osaka, Japan) and Tetsuya Kanayama (Osaka, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A shoulder belt has a longitudinal direction and a transverse direction intersecting the longitudinal direction, and includes a first section and a second section spaced apart from each other in the transverse direction in a cross section intersecting the longitudinal direction, and a third section connecting between the first section and the second section. An expansion and contraction ratio of the third secti...