Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Boston Scientific, Medtronic settle legal disputes

By Mass High Tech staff

Medical devices giant Boston Scientific Corp. and Medtronic Inc., a Minnesota-based developer of chronic disease treatment, have settled two lawsuits and agreed to hold three others. All the disputes concerned intellectual property over catheters and stents.

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but Boston Scientific (NYSE: BSX) officials said the agreements will not affect its financial results.

Last August, the U.S. District Court of Marshall, Texas, ruled that two Medtronic patents were unenforceable and it reduced damages from the previous ruling against Boston Scientific from $250 million to $19 million. The dispute concerned Boston Scientific balloon catheters and delivery systems, which Medtronic argued were infringing on their own patents.

Boston Scientific has been entangled in a number of IP lawsuits in the past few years.

Earlier this month, a federal circuit appeals court ruled against Boston Scientific in a protracted drug eluting stent patent lawsuit.

The decision was handed down for an appeal filed by Johnson & Johnson Co.’s subsidiary Cordis Corp. Boston Scientific had maintained that Johnson & Johnson had violated its intellectual property rights with its Cypher Sirolimus-Eluting Stent System.