VISIE 3D scanners are Investigational Devices and are not available for sale.
“One of the most valuable inventions that Jonathan Spangler has ever protected, a revolutionary system and method for safe and reproducible minimally invasive spine surgery, was once rejected by the patent office because of a children’s game. The invention was a neurophysiology-enabled instrumentation system that stimulates and monitors nearby nerves as instruments are advanced through the nerve-rich psoas muscle towards the side of the spine.
It lets the surgeon know if they are getting close to nerves so they can actively negotiate past them to create a minimally invasive lateral operative corridor, avoiding the well-known perils of posterior and anterior spine surgery approaches. The US Patent and Trademark office cited prior art against the application: The instructions for Operation – the 1960s game where a buzzer goes off if your tweezers touch the wrong spot.
“His team did overcome the objection and the technology helped NuVasive become a leading company in the global spine surgery market. But the experience did underscore the fact that protecting sophisticated technology takes more than filing paperwork. You have to really understand the underlying technology of an innovation to be able to explain not only where the exact differentiation lies, but why that differentiation matters, be it patient safety, ease of use, lowering costs in the healthcare system, preventing revision surgeries, etc… That’s the experience and judgement that Jonathan Spangler brings to VISIE, where he leads intellectual property strategy.
Spangler studied biomedical and electrical engineering at Marquette University. He describes the small number of people who elect to study first engineering, then go to law school, then take the patent bar exam (in addition to a state bar exam) as “gluttons for punishment.” He is one of them. At law school, he was drawn to the intersection of technology and commercial value. “Patent law within life sciences? What a blessing.”
While still in law school, he spent a summer at the US Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Academy, training as a Patent Examiner. Seeing the process from the examiner’s side taught him something many founders never understand: a rejection isn’t the end. It’s the start of a conversation. If you understand what examiners need and you are a “good steward of their time,” you can usually find common ground. Relationships built on trust over years matter more than any single application. This was a valuable lesson that stood him in great stead during the rest of his career.
After working at specialist patent firms, including a top medical device patent prosecution firm and later the then-largest patent litigation boutique in the U.S., Spangler moved in-house. He built an IP department from scratch at A-Med Systems, a cardiac surgery startup. In 2001 he joined NuVasive as Chief Patent Counsel, and its first in-house attorney, a testament to its commitment to innovation.
Over the next 15 years, NuVasive grew from around 30 employees and $2M+ in revenue into the global leader in minimally invasive spine surgery with more than 2,000 employees and $800M+ in revenue. As its top IP executive, he built a team and created an award-winning global patent portfolio that grew by more than 800%.
“That growth was built on strict discipline, not just volume. NuVasive was not short of new ideas, in fact there were far too many to patent. Spangler’s response was to apply a business lens and categorize each invention based on certain key factors: commercial vs. non-commercial, strategic value, and level of differentiation. Commercial, highly-differentiated IP assets garnered the highest investment both geographically and in the number of applications. Commercial yet less differentiated warranted a narrower geographic focus and fewer applications. Strategic IP assets split that difference.
“This categorization may sound obvious, but in practice it takes years of experience with patents to be able to distinguish one from the other – experience of them being tested by competitors, in court and at the examiner’s office. It also takes experience to identify what’s truly an innovation. Patents require novelty and must be non-obvious and most inventors are far too close to the matter to be able to accurately identify either. Many new ideas do not hold up under scrutiny.
