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.
William A. Edelstein
William A. Edelstein (November 21, 1944 – February 10, 2014) was an American physicist. One of the key developers of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), he was part of the team that developed the first full-body MRI scanner at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, and was the primary inventor of spin-warp imaging, which is still used in all commercial MRI systems.