ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,311,504, issued on May 27, was assigned to Ushio Denki K.K. (Tokyo).

"Holding mechanism and exposure apparatus" was invented by Kenji Ishida (Tokyo) and Takeshi Kitamura (Tokyo).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A holding mechanism includes a suction section and a sealing section. The suction section includes a suction area where a substrate is subjected to vacuum suction. The sealing section includes an elastic section having a plurality of sides arranged to surround the suction area and a plurality of corners each formed between adjacent ones of the plurality of sides, and a repulsive-force-suppressing section provided in at least one of t...