ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,344,559, issued on July 1, was assigned to The Swatch Group Research and Development Ltd (Marin, Switzerland).
"Decorative ceramic item" was invented by Bernard Bertheville (Sion, Switzerland) and Yann Fallet (Savagnier, Switzerland).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A decorative item is made of a ceramic material, where ceramic material includes a carbide phase and an oxide phase, the carbide phase being present in a percentage by volume comprised between 50 and 95% and the oxide phase being present in a percentage by volume comprised between 5 and 50%. The decorative item is manufactured by a method of powder metallurgy."
The patent was fi...