US Patent Issued to Panasonic Intellectual Property Management on Sept. 30 for "Manually operated ring drive device" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 30 -- United States Patent no. 12,429,750, issued on Sept. 30, was assigned to Panasonic Intellectual Property Management Co. Ltd. (Osaka, Japan).

"Manually operated ring drive device" was invented by Fumio Shinano (Osaka, Japan), Tetsuya Morita (Osaka, Japan) and Yuichiro Kimoto (Osaka, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A zoom ring drive device (10) comprises a guide unit (11), a guide unit (14), a drive gear (21), and a DC motor (23). The guide unit (11) slides in the optical axis direction of a lens (L1) included in the lens barrel (32). The guide unit (14) is provided to the guide unit (11) and slides in a direction perpendicular to the optical axis direction. Th...