ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 11 -- United States Patent no. 12,467,518, issued on Nov. 11, was assigned to TOYOTA JIDOSHA K.K. (Toyota, Japan).
"Planetary gear mechanism" was invented by Takeshi Matsumoto (Toyota, Japan), Masanori Sakai (Nagoya, Japan), Yoshito Sekiguchi (Kariya, Japan), Jun Kamitake (Toyota, Japan) and Takeyoshi Horibe (Hekinan, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A planetary gear mechanism including a plurality of pinion gears held rotatably and revolvably, and a ring gear meshing with the plurality of pinion gears, wherein the ring gear includes a plurality of low rigidity portions (through holes) having a small section modulus in a radial direction of the ring gear at predeterm...