Patent ID: 8007277

Claim:
A pre-shaped, non-customized dental tray device suitable for placement over at least a portion of a person's dental arch, said dental tray device comprising: a generally horseshoe-shaped and moisture resistant barrier layer configured to substantially correspond to the curvature of a person's dental arch and having sufficient flexibility without heating in boiling water so as to readily conform to a plurality of differently sized dental arches corresponding to different people without customization, the barrier layer having a labial-buccal wall, a lingual wall, and a bottom wall interposed between the labial-buccal wall and the lingual wall, the barrier layer having an anterior region that at least partially covers anterior tooth surfaces when worn and a posterior region that partially covers posterior tooth surfaces when worn, the barrier layer being substantially devoid of structures corresponding to the size and shape of a person's unique dentition so that the barrier layer is designed to comfortably fit over a plurality of differently-sized and/or shaped teeth corresponding to different people; the moisture resistant barrier layer comprising one or more structural features that facilitate the ability of the barrier layer to conform to a plurality of differently-sized nd/or shaped teeth when worn, the one or more structural features comprising: an abrupt reduction in width of the bottom wall at a location corresponding to a transition between the posterior region and the anterior region of the barrier layer to account for a significant difference between the occlusal surface width of posterior teeth as compared to anterior teeth, the lingual wall terminating at or before the transition between the posterior and anterior regions such that there is a labial-buccal wall and a bottom wall in the posterior region but no lingual wall in the posterior region.