You couldn't patent a notch filter for obvious reasons. On the other hand the coating isn't a notch filter, it's a series of bandpass/notch/dichroic/whatever f

You couldn't patent a notch filter for obvious reasons. On the other hand the coating isn't a notch filter, it's a series of bandpass/notch/dichroic/whatever filters which are optimised for colour blindness. If you look at the transmission graphs at least for the UV450 there's varying transmission over the entire visible range. So the patent would be for filters at X, Y and Z nm in a product designed for eyewear. The problem with software patents is that they're extremely broad - e.g. things that are obvious and well documented in the literature like sorting. There are also obvious hardware patents like rounded corners. A good example of a design patent is Blackberry's keyboard. They didn't patent keyboards, but they _were_ able to patent the little bumps that help you navigate. As someone who works in hardware, sure in raw materials it cost <100k, but when you start charging for people's time, stuff gets a whole lot more expensive. Not everyone can live off ramen and sleep in the office. This probably took a few years to properly develop. The patents (applied for) are below: http://www.sumobrain.com/patents/wipo/Multi-band-color-vision-filters/WO2012119158.html http://www.sumobrain.com/patents/wipo/Multi-band-color-visio... https://www.google.com/patents/WO2012119158A1?cl=en&dq=inassignee:%22ENCHROMA+INC.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=W2luU6fRAe-g7Ab8koHQDg&ved=0CEgQ6AEwAg https://www.google.com/patents/WO2012119158A1?cl=en&dq=inass...