US Patent Issued to Ricoh on Sept. 9 for "Toner, developer, toner storage unit, image forming apparatus, and image forming method" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 10 -- United States Patent no. 12,411,429, issued on Sept. 9, was assigned to Ricoh Co. Ltd. (Tokyo).

"Toner, developer, toner storage unit, image forming apparatus, and image forming method" was invented by Akinori Saitoh (Shizuoka, Japan), Akio Takei (Shizuoka, Japan), Toma Takebayashi (Shizuoka, Japan), Masahiro Yukikawa (Kanagawa, Japan), Tomomi Harashima (Shizuoka, Japan) and Hiroshi Yamada (Shizuoka, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A toner includes toner base particles and external additives deposited on a surface of the toner base particle. The toner base particle includes an amorphous polyester resin, a crystalline polyester resin, a release agent, and resi...