By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at China Weekly News -- According to news reporting originating from Washington, D.C., by VerticalNews journalists, a patent application by the inventor YAMAMOTO, Kazuya (Kanagawa, JP), filed on September 23, 2014, was made available online on January 22, 2015.
The assignee for this patent application is Ricoh Company, Limited.
Reporters obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: "Example embodiments relate to a sheet processing apparatus that aligns and binds sheet-shaped members (simply referred to as 'sheets' in the specification) such as sheets of paper, recording sheets, transfer sheets, or OHP sheets that are carried in, an image forming system that includes the sheet processing apparatus and an image forming apparatus such as a copying machine, a printer, a facsimile, or a digital multi-function peripheral (MFP), and a sheet processing method which is executed in the sheet processing apparatus.