ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,329,650, issued on June 17, was assigned to NIPRO Corp. (Osaka, Japan).
"Artificial joint" was invented by Hitoshi Hirata (Nagoya, Japan), Shigeru Kurimoto (Nagoya, Japan), Shunsuke Notazawa (Osaka, Japan) and Yuto Otani (Osaka, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An artificial joint is characterized by: having a first member including a caput part on which a prescribed curved surface is formed, and a second member including a fossa part having a surface which abuts the prescribed curved surface of the caput part; the second member being rotatable in a flexing direction of a joint with a prescribed point on the caput part being the cent...