A patent for our client BELKIN Vision Ltd., drafted and prosecuted by our office, was issued in the European Union, then unsuccessfully attacked by one of the company’s competitors. Here is a link to the European patent.

BELKIN Vision was founded by Prof. Michael Belkin and Daria Lemann Blumenthal, CEO, to answer a vital need in glaucoma care by creating a glaucoma laser treatment, easily accessible to both doctors and patients.

Under the company’s innovative technology, glaucoma is treated by irradiating an eye of a patient with a laser beam aimed at the patient’s eye with no physical contact between the laser machine and the eye. The positive effect is an automated, intuitive and user and patient friendly procedure which can be performed by every eye care provider. The European patent filed by BELKIN Vision covers this innovative technology and was issued in the European Union in May 2020.

A few months thereafter, a European company filed an opposition arguing that the invention covered by the European patent is not novel and obvious. They further sent a long list of allegedly relevant prior art references.

Following an oral hearing held in May 2022 (and handled by our colleagues in Europe, Beck Greener patent attorneys), the decision made by the European Patent Office was to acknowledge that the invention was novel and non-obvious.