May 30 2013
BIOLASE, Inc., the world's leading manufacturer and distributor of dental lasers, announced today that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued BIOLASE a new patent covering the use of its laser technologies for treating various conditions of the eye, including presbyopia, cataracts, and glaucoma.
Patent 8,448,465 is titled "Methods for Treating Eye Conditions," and significantly broadens the claims for this patent family and anticipates using complementary technologies to automate and perfect procedures to identify the rigidity of the eye to optimize treatment locations in presbyopia procedures.
Federico Pignatelli, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, commented, "This patent extends and reinforces the ability of BIOLASE's wholly owned subsidiary OCCULASE, Inc. to strategically partner with companies that offer complimentary technologies that enhance our core laser technologies. Such strategic affiliations will allow for greater predictability and more consistent visual outcomes for the patient. Our revolutionary technology has the ability to reduce the learning curve for ophthalmologists and decrease the required surgical time. We will continue to expand our intellectual property in order to establish OCCULASE as a leader in the ophthalmic laser arena, not only by developing the best clinical solutions but also cost effective ones."
This is the tenth U.S. patent issued under the "Methods for Treating Eye Conditions" patent family with an additional three patents issued internationally and six more pending worldwide. BIOLASE currently holds a total of 20 issued and 20 pending U.S. and international patents in seven patent families in the field of ophthalmology. These patents give BIOLASE and its wholly-owned subsidiary, OCCULASE, the widest range of potential applications and coverage in the field.
"This patent further leverages our innovative WaterLase technology and incorporates the ocular rigidity theory which broadens our patent family to allow the laser parameters and groupings of tissue treatment to compensate for correlation in the various layers in ocular tissue for treating eye conditions such as presbyopia, cataract, and glaucoma, among many others," added Marcia Van Valen, Director of Business Development.
"This new patent and those currently under application further demonstrate how broad the applications are for our patented laser technologies within ophthalmology," concluded Pignatelli.
Source: http://www.biolase.com/