ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,296,777, issued on May 13, was assigned to ZF AUTOMOTIVE GERMANY GMBH (Alfdorf, Germany) and ZF AUTOMOTIVE JAPAN Co. LTD. (Kanagawa, Japan).

"Vehicle occupant restraining system comprising a passenger airbag" was invented by Naoki Ando (Tochigi, Japan), Xu Yang (Kanagawa, Japan), Ahmad Hafizi (Kanagawa, Japan), Hidekazu Iida (Tokyo) and Harish Kumar Reddy Tummala (Kanagawa, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A vehicle occupant restraint system comprises a passenger airbag (10) which includes first and second inflatable chambers (24, 26), wherein the second chamber (26) is provided to cushion the head (28) of a vehicle occupant (14) ass...