The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Feb. 10, 2004
Filed:
Dec. 21, 2001
Motonori Hanada, Kanagawa, JP;
Jun Hosokawa, Tokyo, JP;
Kouta Fujimori, Kanagawa, JP;
Kazuhiko Yuuki, Kanagawa, JP;
Ricoh Company, Ltd., Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
The present invention provides an electro photographic image forming apparatus comprising a replacement assembly having a toner container attachable to the image forming apparatus, a feeding unit to feed toner from the toner container to a development unit, and a read/write non-volatile memory, wherein, the image forming apparatus comprising an estimation unit which generates information in such way that first, the estimation unit obtains an amount of a toner feed period for the feeding unit during forming images, next, accumulates the amount of a toner feed period into an accumulated sum of the amount of a toner feed periods, then, generates the information on the amount of toner in the replacement assembly and stores the information in the read/write non-volatile memory.