SPY (Swimming Pool eYe or Anti-drowning system for swimming pools)
This page aims to situate the general context in matter of industrial propriety and to offer the possibility of accelerating the process of setting ups of supervising systems in swimming pools to new partners.

State of the SPY patents
This anti-drowning system SPY is the first system in the world of supervision of pools which is assisted by computer. This system has been invented by Mr Edouard Menoud who has deposited the first (national) patent N° CH 691 151 on June 6th 1994. The patent protecting this invention in the whole Swiss territory is available as a .pdf document
(obtain Acrobat Reader free of charge ).

Other international patents have been deposited in:

Switzerland
Germany
France
U.S.A.
Canada
Japan

The origin of those patents is the international application N° WO 95/34056 , deposited on June 2nd at "the Office mondial de la propriété intellectuelle" OMPI/WIPO. This application, as well as the European patents EP00764316B1 and the American patents US05886630 corresponding to, are also available as a .pdf document
(obtain Acrobat Reader free of charge ).

The summary of the international patent application reads as follows:

The security of the system
The system of supervision of the pool attended by computer has to be sure and reliable. Particularly, one has to make sure that the whole volume of water under control and included between the camera and the facing wall, is scanned.

It is precisely what the SPY system allows, sounding an alert if this condition is not, or not anymore filled up.

The patent also brings in supervising methods of endangered bodies, by proceeding the virtual reconstitution of them and working on so called virtual or synthesised images.

International Competition
Other companies started to work in the same field, mainly in relative vision. Their system is not able to ensure that the scanned zone matches the whole surface to be scanned.

This is particularly true when the movements of water varies or by strong sunshine.

Licenses
Given the large extension of the SPY licenses, of the huge interest of the field, market potentiality in the field of private and public swimming pools as well as the urgency for solving these supervision problems, e-novent decided to practice an active licence policy and is consequently open to partnership. Don't hesitate to contact us about this subject.