Patent Issued for Stabilized Contact Lenses

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Journal of Engineering -- A patent by the inventor Gerligand, Pierre (St. Johns, FL), filed on December 17, 2009, was cleared and issued on December 4, 2012, according to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by VerticalNews correspondents.

Patent number 8322851 is assigned to Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, Inc. (Jacksonville, FL).

The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors: "Correction of certain optical defects can be accomplished by imparting non-spherical corrective aspects to one or more surfaces of a contact lens such as cylindrical, bifocal, or multifocal characteristics. These lenses must generally be maintained at a specific orientation while on the eye to be effective. Maintenance of the on-eye orientation of a lens typically is accomplished by altering the mechanical characteristics of the lens. Prism stabilization including decentering of the lens' front surface relative to the back surface, thickening of the inferior lens periphery, forming depressions or elevations on the lens' surface, and truncating the lens edge are examples of stabilization approaches. Additionally, dynamic stabilization has been used in which the lens is stabilized by the use of thin zones, or areas in which the thickness of the lens' periphery is reduced. Typically, the thin zones are located at two regions that are symmetric about either the vertical or horizontal axis of the lens from the vantage point of its on-eye placement.

"Evaluating lens design involves making judgments concerning the performance of the lens on-eye and then optimizing the design if necessary and possible. This process is typically done by clinically evaluating the test design in patients. However, this process is time consuming and expensive because it requires a significant number of patients to be tested since patient to patient variability must be accounted for.

"There is a continuing need for improving the stabilization of certain contact lenses and the method of designing them."

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent, VerticalNews journalists also obtained the inventor's summary information for this patent: "The invention is a method of designing stabilized contact lens in which the stabilization zones are defined by a mathematical construct. The construct can be a Bezier curve.

"In one aspect of the invention lenses are designed using coefficients of Bezier curve describing the upper portion of the angular thickness profile such that the Sag values are negative. When the stabilization zone is added to the lens periphery the thickness of the upper portion of the lens is reduced instead of being increased; reducing the thickness in the upper portion of the stabilization allows reducing the maximum thickness and still keeping the same thickness differential. Slopes around the location of maximum thickness are not too much affected with this profile change.

"In another aspect of the invention the area containing negative sag values is applied on the upper and lower portion of the stabilization zones.

"In another yet another aspect of the invention the maximum thickness of the stabilization zones differs between the left and the right side.

"In yet another aspect of the invention the ramp of the thickness profile toward the positive and/or the negative angles can be adjusted to increase or decrease the ramp angle.

"In yet another aspect of the invention lenses made according to the design method have improved stabilization."

URL and more information on this patent, see: Gerligand, Pierre. Stabilized Contact Lenses. U.S. Patent Number 8322851, filed December 17, 2009, and issued December 4, 2012. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=101&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=5016&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=20121204.PD.&OS=ISD/20121204&RS=ISD/20121204

Keywords for this news article include: Johnson & Johnson Vision Care Inc.

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