ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 6 -- United States Patent no. 12,280,217, issued on April 22, was assigned to VINCENT MEDICAL (DONG GUAN) MANUFACTURING Co. LTD. (Guangdong, China) and VINCENT MEDICAL (DONGGUAN) TECHNOLOGY Co. LTD. (Guangdong, China).

"Heater plate" was invented by Yu Lei (Guangdong, China), Jiebing Xu (Guangdong, China), Haibin Yu (Guangdong, China), Zhenxiang Hu (Guangdong, China) and Jun Zhao (Guangdong, China).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A heat plate for a humidifier contains a thermally conductive plate having a top surface and a bottom surface opposite the top surface. A temperature sensor is affixed to the bottom surface and a thermally conductive layer is directly-affixed to t...