US Patent Issued to Panasonic Intellectual Property Management on Feb. 10 for "Lens barrel and camera equipped with same" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 11 -- United States Patent no. 12,546,970, issued on Feb. 10, was assigned to Panasonic Intellectual Property Management Co. Ltd. (Osaka, Japan).

"Lens barrel and camera equipped with same" was invented by Yuichiro Kimoto (Osaka, Japan), Tetsuya Morita (Osaka, Japan), Masayuki Shodai (Osaka, Japan), Naoki Yoshikawa (Osaka, Japan) and Takeshi Sakakibara (Osaka, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A lens barrel 10 comprises a fourth lens group unit 20, cam pins 22a and 22b, a biasing pin 23, a cutout portion C1, a substantially cylindrical first lens group unit 13, and a plurality of rectilinear guide portions 25. The fourth lens group unit 20 has a substantially cylindri...