ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,285,082, issued on April 29, was assigned to NIKE Inc. (Beaverton, Ore.).
"Buffing system for footwear" was invented by Chun-Chieh Chen (Huatan Township, Taiwan), Yi-Min Chen (Hemei Township, Taiwan), Chia-Hung Lin (Changhua, Taiwan), Hsien-Kuang Wu (Taichung, Taiwan) and Hung-Yu Wu (Huatan Township, Taiwan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Buffing of a footwear component allows for an alteration of the component surface to achieve an intended surface for aesthetics and/or manufacturing purposes. The buffing is performed in a system having a vision module, a sidewall buffing module, an up surface buffing module, and a down surface buffing mo...