ALEXANDRIA, Va., Dec. 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,496,502, issued on Dec. 16, was assigned to TAMASU Co. LTD. (Tokyo).
"Table tennis rubber" was invented by Hiroki Teramura (Saitama, Japan) and Yuta Tsukiji (Saitama, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A table tennis rubber includes a spongy sheet, and a rubber sheet layered and adhered to the spongy sheet with a plurality of protrusions defined on a sticking surface of a main body of the rubber sheet to the spongy sheet. The rubber sheet has a thickness of 1.6 mm or less in a layering direction on the spongy sheet. A value denoted as ar is an area percentage (%) of the protrusions to the sticking surface of the main body of the rubber...