US Patent Issued to Ricoh on March 4 for "Sheet separation device, laminator, image forming apparatus, and image forming system" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,240,731, issued on March 4, was assigned to Ricoh Co. Ltd. (Tokyo).

"Sheet separation device, laminator, image forming apparatus, and image forming system" was invented by Koju Kawakami (Tokyo), Akira Kunieda (Tokyo), Yohsuke Haraguchi (Kanagawa, Japan), Hirofumi Horita (Kanagawa, Japan), Satoshi Kuno (Tokyo), Yasunobu Kidoura (Kanagawa, Japan) and Ryohsuke Akaishi (Kanagawa, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A sheet separation device that conveys a two-ply sheet in a state where the one side joined is located on an upstream side or a downstream side of the two-ply sheet in a conveyance direction, separates the two-ply sheet into the ...