ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,269,296, issued on April 8, was assigned to SUMITOMO RUBBER INDUSTRIES LTD. (Hyogo, Japan).
"Tire" was invented by Takashi Hagihara (Kobe, Japan), Ryota Ikeda (Kobe, Japan), Takuya Fujimoto (Kobe, Japan), Daichi Takatsuki (Kobe, Japan), Masahiro Tatsuta (Kobe, Japan) and Kengo Fukuda (Kobe, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A tire for which a mounting direction to a vehicle is specified, has a tread portion axially divided into five land portions each provided with sipes. The five land portions are a first shoulder land portion, a first middle land portion, a crown land portion, a second middle land portion, and a second shoulder land...