Fonar Corp. v. General Electric Co.
"Fonar" was a dispute between medical device manufacturer Fonar Corporation and General Electric over Fonar's patent on MRI technology. Fonar's founder, Raymond Damadian, was issued U.S. Patent 3,789,832 (priority date 1972-03-17) for an "apparatus and method for detecting cancer in tissue" using the magnetic resonance of atoms. Damadian's patent was the first patent on an MRI machine issued in the United States. Also at issue was a later patent, U.S. Patent 4,871,966 issued in 1989, covering a method for obtaining MRI images of multiple planes at different orientations in a single scan. GE is a major manufacturer of MRI scanners, and Fonar sued GE for infringing these patents by producing its scanners as well as inducing others to infringe.
Paul Bottomley (scientist)
Born in Melbourne, Australia, Bottomley earned a BSc in Physics from Monash University in 1974. In 1975, he started a PhD in Physics at the University of Nottingham in one of the three original groups that began MRI. In Raymond Andrew’s group, alongside that of Peter Mansfield, they built the first MRI system producing radiographic-quality images of the human wrist (Nature), and performed the initial work on RF-field and power deposition in human MRI. Upon completing his PhD, he went to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 1978 to adapt MRI for spatially localized MRS, using surface coils to demonstrate metabolite depletion and reversal in regional myocardial ischemia (Science).