ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,239,556, issued on March 4, was assigned to OLYMPUS Corp. (Tokyo).
"Stent" was invented by Kanta Sasaki (Hachioji, Japan), Ryoji Hyuga (Kamiina-gun, Japan), Kosuke Ozawa (Hachioji, Japan) and Hirofumi Taniguchi (Hachioji, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The stent having self-expandability, the stent including: a body part formed in a tubular shape by a wire; and a first locking part and a second locking part protruding outward in a radial direction of the body part and formed by the wire. A first angle formed by a protrusion direction of the first locking part and an axial direction of the body part is different from a second angle ...