Patents & technical heritage

Bibliographic data verified from extracts of the official Swiss register (Swissreg — Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property, extracts of 18.04.2007) preserved in the archives. The facsimiles are patent documents, public by nature.

Beyond the invention itself, the patents filed by Alfred Tomatis mark out the material history of the electronic ear. Their succession traces a trajectory: from an apparatus first conceived as therapeutic, one passes to an audio-vocal integrator, then to devices for the education of listening, and finally to applications turned towards language learning. The official titles, sober and legal, express this evolution in their own way.

Chronological table of the patents

The ordering follows the priority date (first filing), which marks the anteriority of the invention; the date of grant, often much later, is indicated separately.

All these patents have now fallen into the public domain, after expiry of the maximum term of protection (cancellations staggered between 1995 and 2002). Each document can be consulted online on the public registers (Google Patents / Espacenet). Many national equivalents (FR, US, JP, MX, DE, ES, IT, GB, BE…) of these same inventions also exist — for example the American patents US 4212119 (“Audio-vocal integrator apparatus”) and US 5362240 (“Method and apparatus for the teaching of languages”).

Simplified technical descriptions

1975 — The therapeutic apparatus (CH 599785)

The first patent in this series protects a therapeutic installation acting on the subject’s “peripheral sensitive apparatus” — the ear and, more broadly, sensory reception — by means of sounds and vibrations. Classified under therapeutics (IPC A61F-011/04), it formalizes the clinical use of the device: not a simple listening apparatus, but an instrument intended to act on the subject through sound.

1978 — The audio-vocal integrator (CH 631853)

This is the heart of the invention: the electronic ear proper, designated here as the “audio-vocal integrator apparatus.” The term integrator is apt: the apparatus acts on the loop that connects the ear to the voice. Classified under acoustics/electroacoustics (IPC H04R-025/00), it implements the method’s characteristic principle — the gating between two filtering channels, which solicits and trains listening by alternating what the ear perceives.

1980 — The education of hearing (CH 650606)

This patent, filed from a Canadian priority, protects a device and a method for the education of a patient’s hearing. The vocabulary shifts from therapy towards education: it is no longer a matter only of treating, but of training the ear — a formulation that announces the pedagogical applications to come.

1983 — Language learning (EP 0127534)

The linguistic turn is explicit: the apparatus is now presented as an instrument for training in the practice of a native or foreign language, with a view to its complete assimilation. Classified under teaching (IPC G09B), it transposes the principle of the electronic ear to the field of learning: preparing the ear to perceive the frequencies proper to a language in order to facilitate its acquisition.

1991 — The teaching method (EP 0523222 / WO 92/14229)

The last of the series, this patent — filed by the engineers of Tomatis International (Dominique Cavé and Marc Bongiorno), and not by Tomatis himself — protects a method and an apparatus for the teaching of languages. It marks the passage from the invention carried by the man to a corporate technology, extended and industrialized after its founder.