Patent ID: 7040757

Claim:
A contact lens, comprising: a posterior surface; and an opposite anterior surface including a vertical meridian, a horizontal meridian, a central optical zone, a transitional non-optical zone extending outwardly from the central optical zone and surrounding the central optical zone, a peripheral zone surrounding the transitional non-optical zone, and an edge zone circumscribing and tangent to the peripheral zone, wherein the central optical zone and the peripheral zone are designed separately and independently from each other and then blended together by the transitional non-optical zone to eliminate flexion points or sharp edges or both at junction between the central and peripheral zones, wherein the transitional non-optical zone has a surface which provides a continuous transition from the central optical zone to the peripheral zone and ensures that the peripheral zone, the transitional non-optical zone and the central optical zone are tangent to each other, and wherein the peripheral zone has a surface that, in combination with the posterior surface, provides in the peripheral zone of the lens a thickness profile which is characterized (1) by having a lens thickness which increases progressively from the top of the peripheral zone downwardly along each of the vertical meridian and lines parallel to the vertical meridian until reaching a maximum value within the peripheral zone at a position between the central optical zone and the edge zone and then decreases to the upper edge of the edge zone, or (2) by having a mirror symmetry with respect to a plane cutting through the vertical meridian, by having a substantially constant thickness in the peripheral zone along the horizontal meridian and by having a thickness which decreases progressively from the horizontal meridian upward to the bottom edge of the edge zone or downward to the top of edge of the edge zone along each of the vertical meridian and lines parallel to the vertical meridian.