ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, July 11, 1996 TAG: 9607110048
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
Innotech Inc., a Roanoke company manufacturing and distributing equipment and supplies for making eyeglass lenses, said Wednesday it has received a U.S. patent for lenses that change from dark to light twice as fast as most existing light-sensitive lenses.
The company said it expects to begin marketing its PhotoFast lenses and lens blanks made from the plastic material to optical retailers before the end of this year. It received the patent this month from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
The U.S. market for photochromatic, or light-sensitive, lenses amounted to 16 percent of all eyeglass lenses sold in the United States during 1995, or about 13.4 million pairs of lenses, the company said.
Ronald Blum, Innotech's chairman and chief executive officer, said the new product will impact the company's sales both because it sells for a higher price and because it will mean users of Innotech's Excalibur lens fabricating system will be able to get more use of their machinery.
The company declined to state its expected sales from the new product. Innotech's most recent quarterly earnings statement showed a net loss of $2.8 million and revenues of $2.01 million for its first quarter, which ended March 31.
The sale of more lens-making materials for the Excalibur system eventually will mean addition of jobs at Innotech but there's no way to put a figure on how many, said Steve Bennington, the company's chief operating officer. The company has manufacturing facilities in Roanoke and Petersburg.
The Excalibur system, made and sold by Innotech, allows optometrists, opticians, ophthalmologists and other optical retailers to make single-vision and multi-focal lenses in their offices without having to send the work out to a lens laboratory.
Initially, owners of the Excalibur system will be able to make the photochromatic lenses. Then, at some time in the future, the company plans to market semi-finished lens blanks to the optical industry at large.
"The method and process covered by our patent ... allows us to convert basically any type of plastic eyeglass lens or lens blank into a photochromatic lens or lens blank," said Amitava Gupta, Innotech's executive vice president for research and development.
The technology works by bonding to a plastic base a light-sensitive layer that is formulated to refract light in the same way as the base material, he said. The process allows for the production of lenses that darken as quickly as most available plastic and glass photochromatic lenses and lighten more than twice as fast, the company said.
The patent is the second won this year by Innotech. The company was granted a patent in May for a lens that combines the advantages of the two most common lens manufacturing methods, resulting in a lens that is not only thin, lightweight and shatter resistant, but also scratch resistant.
LENGTH: Medium: 59 linesby CNB