In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a format war was fought for control of the home video recorder market. Betamax, introduced by Sony, was the first commercially popular technology, and, in the early days, was a superior technology to the upstart VHS, developed by JVC. The Betamax tapes were smaller, allowing for a better camcorder technology, and they had higher video and audio quality. The main drawback to Betamax was the length of the tape, which at first was only 1 hour, compared to the 2-hour VHS tapes. With longer tapes and cheaper equipment, the VHS tape eventually won the market, despite the initial superiority of the Betamax technology.

Although Invisalign was the first clear aligner tray utilized for tooth straightening, several employees of the Align company that produced the system, broke away to develop a competing system: OrthoClear. Although many dentists regarded the OrthoClear system as superior, a lengthy legal battle led to the demise of OrthoClear and the dominance of the Invisalign brand.

Bad Blood

Align Technology was founded in 1997 by Zia Chishti and Kelsey Wirth, and received approval from the Food and Drug Administration to market the Invisalign system the following year. Both founders left the company by 2003. Chishti then founded OrthoClear in 2005 to produce a competing design for utilizing clear plastic braces to align teeth.

However, the founding of OrthoClear was immediately accompanied by lawsuits from Align, which alleged patent infringement and illegal conduct by Chishti and others. In the complaint, Chishti is named as having met with patent lawyers, software engineers, and other employees in order to recruit them for his new enterprise, all in violation with codes of conduct and his contractual obligations, which he sought to avoid.

According to OrthoClear, the lawsuits filed by Align were meritless, since Chishti was the chief inventor named on the Invisalign patents. Align, they say, was a company that had lost 90 % of its original employees and had become a company without innovative ability to extend the scope of its practice, and that the people had left the company partly to escape from the profiteering attitude of the forces that had taken hold of the company.

A Superior Product?

During the short period of time that OrthoClear aligners were being produced, they developed an impressive reputation among dentists. Dentists cited the ability of OrthoClear systems to correct misalignments that Invisalign could not. Also, they said that although the Invisalign software was "slicker," the OrthoClear mouthpieces fit better. In addition, doctors pointed out that many times Invisalign treatments did not work as planned and patients were required to undergo additional treatments for as long as 6 months after the planned completion of treatment, whereas this was never the case for OrthoClear. In addition, the OrthoClear treatments were cheaper.

The Demise of OrthoClear

However, in the end, the legal battle would doom the new company. After fighting a lawsuit for its entire existence, the company agreed in September 2006 to close its doors and turn all its intellectual materials over to Align in exchange for $20 million.

Although the company producing the superior product was destroyed, the transfer of intellectual property back to Align meant that the older company could incorporate technological improvements into its design, resulting, hopefully, in an improved version of the Invisalign process.