Patent 8025349 was granted and assigned to Samsung on September, 2011 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A refrigerator allowing a user to easily open a door of a refrigerator with less force, including a main body having an upper storage compartment and a lower storage compartment, a door sliding to open and close any of the storage compartments, a handle vertically rotatable relative to the door, a plurality of push members moving to advanced positions from retreated positions by the vertical rotation of the handle to separate the door from the main body, and an elastic member between at least one of the push members and the door to restore the push members to the retreated positions when an external force is removed from the handle.