My one in a million patent collision - easee vs ibis vision

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Back in 2021 I was a bit down as a CTO of easee, but then decided to do what I do best: innovate. It turns out that roughly around the same time, IBIS Vision, one of our UK competitors, was doing the same thing. They filed "GB2612366A - Method and system for eye testing" and we filed "NL2029579A - Guiding a user to a test position for performing a computer-based eye exam." . This describes almost exactly the same ingenious solution and completely randomly, has EXACTLY the same priority date of November 1st 2021.

Legal implications

What follows is a bit of a legal quagmire. Easee would not be able to attack IBIS, and neither could IBIS attack easee, because both had valid patents for the same invention. Who would be able to expand into other regions though? And could one of the parties license their patent to other entities? So many questions.

The invention

We were trying to figure out how to estimate the distance of the user to the screen at which they performed our vision test. We relied on heel-to-toe steps and the shoe size, but this was a bit clunky. So I came up with a better method using the blind spot in your vision.

Image copyright by Scientific American


The ingenious parts of this invention are:

  • Pre-calibrating the screen with a physical measure (like a plastic bank / ID card)
  • Blind spot distance check
    • the angle between the eye's blind spot vs center-of-vision (fovea) is very uniform in the population
    • you can do a blind spot check (click when the circle in the screen disappears) on a pre-calibrated screen to determine the exact distance to the screen
  • Then use the webcam to determine the pupillary distance (the distance between the two pupils) and track that to measure the distance to the screen while taking the rest of the vision test
This magical combination is identical in both patents. 

Inventing this required a couple of weeks of deep thinking and doing research on my side, and I'm still pretty proud of it. We did not have any communication with IBIS so no clue what the process for invention looked like on their side.

Better execution

Just a couple of days ago the US patent in the family was granted as US20260151029A1. I'm still the inventor but hold no rights of course. This event triggered this blog post, which had been on my to-do list for quite some time. Since this invention a lot happened. I quit my job as CTO of easee back in 2023, and in 2025 easee was bought by its main competitor in the USA - Visibly. This was after years of fighting each other via their respective patent portfolios. Notably the landmark case of Visibly vs Easee in 2020 in which Bird & Bird and Taylor Wessing went head to head, and which I remember from being on vacation in August 2020 in the south of France, and taking calls with very expensive lawyers from my tent. Fun times ;)

It's clear that easee (and now Visibly) executed their patent strategy way better. Where easee has expanded this family from NL into WO, EP, and now the US, IBIS is stuck with their GB patent. Yves was very strategic from the start. Invention is one, but executing on your strategy is another thing, as this case shows.

Now I'm not a patent attorney and have not studied this field, but I do know that this case makes for a rare legal anomaly. We can only wonder what would have happened if IBIS decided to execute international expansion in parallel with easee, and both would have hit all their filing deadlines.

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