ALEXANDRIA, Va., Dec. 23 -- United States Patent no. 12,506,111, issued on Dec. 23, was assigned to Nikon Corp. (Tokyo).
"Alignment method and alignment apparatus" was invented by Hajime Mitsuishi (Yokohama, Japan), Minoru Fukuda (Tokyo) and Isao Sugaya (Kawasaki, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An alignment method for aligning two substrates to be stacked, comprising measuring a position of a mark selected from plurality of marks disposed on at least one substrate of the two substrates and aligning the two substrates based on the position of the measured mark, wherein the mark to be measured is selected based on information relating to distortion of the at least one substrate. The mark ...