ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,287,605, issued on April 29, was assigned to Ricoh Technology Ltd. (Tokyo).

"Toner and production method thereof, toner stored unit, image forming apparatus, and image forming method" was invented by Yasuo Kamada (Shizuoka, Japan), Hiroshi Yamada (Shizuoka, Japan), Akinori Saitoh (Shizuoka, Japan), Akio Takei (Shizuoka, Japan), Toma Takebayashi (Shizuoka, Japan) and Masahiro Yukikawa (Kanagawa, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A toner includes toner base particles each including: a binder resin, a colorant, and wax; and resin particles on surfaces of the toner base particles. A standard deviation of a distance between the resin partic...