US Patent Office Issues Notice of Allowance for SurgiLight's Patent Covering Infrared and Ultraviolet Lasers.Business Editors/Technology, Health & Medical Writers ORLANDO, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 7, 2001 SurgiLight Inc., (OTCBB OTCBB See OTC Bulletin Board (OTCBB). :SRGL) announced today that the United States Patent and Trademark Office The United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO or USPTO) is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that provides patent protection to inventors and businesses for their inventions, and trademark registration for product and intellectual property has issued a Notice of Allowance to the Company for a patent for the method of refractive surgery and presbyopia Presbyopia Definition The term presbyopia means "old eye" and is a vision condition involving the loss of the eye's ability to focus on close objects. correction using infrared and ultraviolet lasers. This is the second patent allowed so far for the Company's laser for the new procedure of presbyopia reversal. The allowed patent with Series number 09/303,673 (673-patent) was submitted to the US Patent Office by Dr. J. T. Lin, the President and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of the Company, in May of 1999. This is the Company's second US patent issued for a new laser technology for the correction of presbyopia. The allowed 673-patent covers a very broad range of laser spectra, from ultraviolet (150-320 nm) to infrared of (0.9-3.6 microns). This patent covers the use of infrared 3 micron "cold-laser" for the correction of presbyopia using a fiber-coupled system which protects the Company's IR-3000 model currently being used in a Phase I human trial in Spain. The 673-patent also covers new infrared lasers between 2.7 and 3.2 microns for the corneal reshaping procedure known as LASIK LASIK laser-assisted in-situ keratomileusis. LA·SIK n. Eye surgery in which the surface of the cornea is reshaped using a laser, performed to correct certain refractive disorders such as myopia. . The Company believes that this mid-infrared laser for LASIK may be safer than the existing UV excimer lasers currently used by all of its competitors including Visx (NYS:EYE), LaserSight (Nasdaq:LASE) and Bausch & Lomb (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange :BOL). SurgiLight has also filed an additional continuation-in-part (CIP (1) (Common Isochronous Packet) The packet format used in time-based (real time) FireWire transmission. See FireWire, IEC 61883 and mLAN. (2) (Common Industrial P ) application to broaden the claims and cover additional claims of the 673-patent. The Company plans to file the Patent Cooperation Treaty The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) is an international patent law treaty, concluded in 1970. It provides a unified procedure for filing patent applications to protect inventions in each of its Contracting States (see Accession section below for current membership (PCT (Private Communications Technology) A protocol from Microsoft that provides secure transactions over the Web. See security protocol. ) application for its allowed US patent to protect its patent rights in most international countries. The Company currently has five (5) patents pending directly related to the laser technology for presbyopia correction. These pending patents cover a broad range of laser spectra and devices for the correction of presbyopia and innovative laser beam reshaping techniques. The Company believes that these pending patents are extremely innovative and very different from anything in the prior art. In October 2000, the Company acquired the Ophthalmic Laser Division of Premier Laser Systems, Inc. (Irvine, CA), which has 14 patents granted and 18 patents pending. SurgiLight is a world leader in the development of ultraviolet lasers, new infrared technologies, a pioneer of scanning lasers and lasers for presbyopia reversal with 17 patents granted and 23 patents pending. The potential market for presbyopia is estimated to be over $150 billion in the U.S. based on the 89 million Americans who suffer from presbyopia (Wall Street Journal, Oct. 26, 2000). The Company continues to receive royalty income from Eye Laser Centers and Cosmetic Mobil Centers. The Company will continue to strengthen and defend its patent position and believes its innovative technologies are different and have great advantages over the existing technologies or prior art owned by its competitors. In addition, the Company's new infrared lasers for the treatment of presbyopia may be safer, with less mutagenic mutagenic inducing genetic mutation. effects, than the existing UV lasers. This press release may contain forward-looking statements regarding but not limited to patents, patent rights, market size, marketing, future events and performance of the Company which involves risks and uncertainties that could materially affect actual results. Investors should refer to documents that the Company files with the SEC for a description of certain factors that could cause actual results to vary from current expectations and the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. |
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