Aligh Technology: Success from Crocked Theeths

Align Technology, the manufacturer of alternative tablets for Invisalign teeth, has many reasons to smile. After years of lukewarm growth, Silicon Valley technology has been recruiting more customers in the slow-changing orthodontics business, driving sales 28 percent year on year. It is estimated that it holds 80% of the orthodontics market in North America and its technology is offered by more than 50,000 orthodontists and dentists. Invisalign reached its four million patient last September. In 2016, sales reached $ 1 billion for the first time. If that is not enough, its stock has risen 62% in the past 12 months, and it has moved faster in the S & P 500, which rose 13% in the same period. Its success is due to its almost monopoly in transparent dental implants, but also because of its patented process that maps digitally and builds the patients' treatment plan.

Now the company is coming to a crossroads and some are wondering if it can continue to provide these glittering revenues. On the one hand, there are many more teeth to align. Last year Invisalign products were used by about 8% of the 3 million orthodontic patients in North America. On the other hand, one of its great benefits comes to an end. This is an arsenal of more than 400 US patents and 300 foreign patents covering everything from the plastic type in patients' mouths to the software that students use to plan their dental movements millimeter by millimeter, months in advance.

Starting next October, some 40 of Align's initial patents will expire, including several patents protecting the process the company uses to digitally plan and manufacture transparent dental rectifiers for patients. This is the first group in what is expected to be a group of 23 pauses per year at least until 2028, according to estimates made by analysts Robert W. Baird. When these patients enter the public space, the company will surely have to deal with greater competition.

"Patents are very, very important in the context of medical devices," explains Jacob Shreko, an intellectual property expert and professor at the Law School in New York. "In the luxury segment, I think people are going to trust them more than Joe's Fly-By-Night Custom Orthodontics, but nothing stops