US Patent Issued to RICOH on Jan. 20 for "Toner, developer, toner storage unit, image forming apparatus, and image forming method" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Jan. 20 -- United States Patent no. 12,529,975, issued on Jan. 20, was assigned to RICOH COMPANY LTD. (Tokyo).

"Toner, developer, toner storage unit, image forming apparatus, and image forming method" was invented by Taishi Yamashita (Shizuoka, Japan), Yohichi Kitagawa (Shizuoka, Japan), Tsukiko Takahashi (Shizuoka, Japan), Mitsuaki Hirose (Shizuoka, Japan) and Daisuke Inoue (Shizuoka, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A toner includes toner particles. Each of the toner particles includes a toner base particle including a binder resin, resin particles covering the toner base particle, and zinc stearate particles serving as an external additive. In each of the toner particl...