May 23, 2011 - Radiation Therapy treatment planning system developers RaySearch Laboratories AB and Prowess Inc. are involved in patent infringmenrt litigation. Prowess recently filed a complaint against RaySearch for U.S. patent infringement in a court in Baltimore, Md.
RaySearch said the two companies had been in discussions over the issue, but they were fruitless and Prowess moved ahead with the litigation.
The patent concerns direct optimization of machine parameters in radiation treatment planning and was issued in 2007 by the U.S. patent authority USPTO. Prowess has said that it holds an exclusive license to this patent, which is owned by the University of Maryland. RaySearch has been involved in discussions with Prowess where RaySearch has stated its position that there is no infringement and in addition, that the patent could be invalidated since there is prior art in older publications describing the same concept.
“This concerns a method that we had independently developed and implemented at the Karolinska Institute already in the ‘90s. In addition, both we and others had published articles about the method before this patent application was filed. We do believe that we have a strong case and therefore consider our chances of winning this dispute to be good,” said Johan Löf, CEO of RaySearch.
Prowess Inc. is an international radiation cancer treatment planning software developer, using Windows-based systems.
RaySearch Laboratories is a medical technology company that develops advanced software solutions for improved radiation therapy of cancer. RaySearch’s products are mainly sold through license agreements with leading partners such as Philips, Nucletron, IBA Dosimetry, Varian, TomoTherapy and Siemens. To date, 15 products have been launched through partners and RaySearch’s software is used at some 1,800 clinics in more than 30 countries.
For more information: www.raysearchlabs.com, www.prowess.com
