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.
James S. Hyde
James S. Hyde (born 1932) is an American biophysicist. He holds the James S. Hyde chair in Biophysics at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) where he specializes in magnetic resonance instrumentation and methodology development in two distinct areas: electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). He is senior author of the widely cited 1995 paper by B.B. Biswal "et al." reporting the discovery of resting state functional connectivity (fcMRI) in the human brain. He also serves as Director of the National Biomedical EPR Center, a Research Resource supported by the National Institutes of Health. He is author or more than 400 peer-reviewed papers and review articles and holds 35 U.S. Patents. He has been recognized by Festschrifts in both EPR and fcMRI.