News: Invisalign To Own OrthoClear for $10M
Today Align Technologies, the inventor of Invisalign(r) announced that it has signed a Binding Settlement Term Sheet with OrthoClear which states that OrthoClear will no longer accept new patient cases for treatment and will transfer all rights to Align Technologies.
This seemingly ends the legal court battles between the two competing makers of invisible teeth straightening aligners. The closing formal statement or by October 12, 2006, OrthoClear will file an exclusion order to prohibit any aligners to be imported into the United States.
The statement says that all listed employees will not start any sort of removable aligner therapy products and related soft market items for 5 years and Align will make a one time cash payment of $10 million to OrthoClear Holdings, Inc.
September 29th, 2006 - 11:04
Actually, Align did not purchase OrthoClear.
With the settlement, Align now clearly owns all of the IP — but Align does not own OrthoClear, nor is it acquiring it’s customers and/or it’s liabilities.
September 29th, 2006 - 11:16
Hi John,
You are right, they did not actually purchase OrthoClear as it was a settlement. Invisalign definitely got the goal they were looking for in putting OrthoClear out of business and controlling all the rights to the clear aligner business.
One thing I was curious about is the fact that they require OrthoClear to stop shipping aligners. Will patients with current accounts and treatments in progress be stuck moving to Invisalign?
I believe OrthoClear ships all of their trays at once, but what about the patients who need corrections half way through treatment?