US Patent Issued to Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, Toyota Jidosha on Feb. 3 for "Collapsible tailgate-mounted storage container" (Michigan Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,539,818, issued on Feb. 3, was assigned to Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America Inc. (Plano, Texas) and Toyota Jidosha K.K. (Toyota Aichi-ken, Japan).

"Collapsible tailgate-mounted storage container" was invented by Paxton S. Williams (Milan, Mich.), Scott Louis Frederick (Brighton, Mich.) and Ryan C. Harris (Saline, Mich.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Systems described herein relate to a stowable collapsible container for a truck bed. In one embodiment, a storage system includes a collapsible container having a footprint sized to fit within a tailgate of a truck. The collapsible container, in a collapsed state, is stow...