ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 26 -- United States Patent no. 12,399,452, issued on Aug. 26, was assigned to RICOH COMPANY LTD. (Tokyo).
"Toner supply device and image forming apparatus" was invented by Kei Hasegawa (Kanagawa, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A toner supply device includes toner containers each containing toner used to form a latent image on a latent-image bearer, and circuitry to perform toner supply control to supply toner from the toner containers to developing devices. In the toner supply device, the toner supply control includes repeating toner supply in which one of the toner containers supplying the toner is switched to another one of the toner containers when a supplying t...