News

(Mostly a summary of current stuff that happened early 2004 - not in the books yet)

Dr. Tom Peebles has retired as our chairman. He was the originator of putting fluoride into infant vitamins, which is the primary reason many people have excellent teeth today. He collected data on a few hundred kids for over 17 years, and published the very best clinical trials on infant fluoride. We have gone far on his work, his credibility, and his leadership.

Dr. Darby Glenn stepped up to be our chairman beginning 2004. His claim to fame is prenatal fluoride, which is still the most interesting of the ways to use fluoride. New directors are Dr. Sylvia Pager (our pediatrician in Honolulu) and my nephew Ben Owen.

The patent office has allowed us a few minor claims after we won our appeal (over "newness"). Then the examiner switched to "obviousness" to deny the remaining claims. Just a few days ago, after my "very convincing" arguments against that, the new problem is that the claims should include fluoride (be ~limited to just fluoride, not other meds like acetaminophen). Yes, this whole thing is nuts. I'll probably appeal again. That seems to work better than my old strategy of just re-writing and re-applying. I think we are getting close to full allowance.

I'm dusting off my old licensing options, etc.

Swiss situation: In Switzerland we were allowed the patent long ago, when we first applied, thanks mostly for Dr. Heinz Brauer going down and convincing them we were right. In Switzerland there are now 5 products using "our" invention. Heinz has talked to them about licenses, and made some progress, but no $$$. Rather than either sue for infringement, or just let them walk over us, I gave the companies a free license. We can cancel it with 3 months notice if we get better ideas.

For now we should be grateful that these Swiss companies are showcasing the idea. I think we should even be willing to pay them the costs of reprinting their packaging, etc, to put our name on it. It would be the best advertising we could get to have their package say something like “The OptiDose system of proportional dosing is patented by and licensed from Prophy Research Corporation  /  address, etc.” I have no idea of the cash cost of this (at least $10K?), and/or we may have to give them some very sweet terms.

I only have 2 days until I blast off to Honolulu to work on the Mountain House, but I will try to set up a web site with a more complete report for the few of you who want more details. The URL should be http://pages.ivillage.com/prophyresearch/. (Rather than type all that, you can email me at raygrogan@hotmail.com and I can send you a clickable link.)  And/or a surf report.

Have a good summer.  Ray