Patents needed for the world’s first bionic eye: 255 and counting
It took a lot of time, funding and the work of countless individual researchers to create the world’s first bionic eye, which gives some sight back to the blind.
How long? Well, the IBM ThinkPad (remember those?) was the world’s hottest laptop computer when Second Sight Medical Products Inc. was doing some of its earliest work.
Second Sight has a bank of those ThinkPad’s in its offices, still dutifully plugging away on data related to the 20-year, $200-million effort to create the eye.
It also took a stunning amount of patents, both in the U.S. and overseas, to protect all of the proprietary information involved in the creation of the $100,000 eye.
The eye is formally called the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System.
When The Times started reporting on Second Sight’s work on the eye, the company was up to 215 patents, so many that they lined two hallways at the headquarters in Sylmar, Calif.
Today, the number of patents is up to 255, and there are still more to come.
“We used to make a big deal out of putting them up on our walls, but we’re running out of room,” said Second Sight Chief Executive Robert Greenberg.
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