USA — A California district court has found Medtronic guilty of infringing on a patent for transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) systems awarded to Colibri Heart Valve in 2014.
The jury determined Medtronic should pay damages of US$106,489,000 to compensate Colibri for the infringement.
In a lawsuit filed in 2020 in a California district court, the Colorado-based company accused Medtronic and its CoreValve subsidiary of infringing on Colibri’s patent rights in the development of its TAVR devices, which include those sold under the CoreValve and Evolut brand names. Medtronic, for its part, claimed that the patent claims were invalid.
The jury concluded after a seven-day trial that Medtronic CoreValve LLC’s Evolut devices violate a Colibri patent for replacing heart valves in patients with heart disease, representatives for the companies have confirmed.
Colorado-based Colibri sued Medtronic in 2020. It alleged doctors use Medtronic’s devices in a way that infringes Colibri’s patent, which covers a method for controlling the deployment of self-expanding artificial heart valves.
The patent relates to Colibri’s own heart-valve implant system. Colibri said in the lawsuit that company officials met with Medtronic about the inventions in 2014 and sent a PowerPoint presentation about the patents to Medtronic in 2018.
The case is Colibri Heart Valve LLC v. Medtronic CoreValve LLC, U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, No. 8:20-cv-00847.
In other development, J&J, Medtronic, and Boston Scientific prepare to compete for the US cardiac ablation market with new trials, as per MedTech dive.
Johnson & Johnson is set to compete with Boston Scientific and Medtronic for market share in the United States for a new method of treating heart arrhythmias.
The company is the third in a row to report on the progress of pulsed-field ablation (PFA) clinical trials in the United States.
On Feb. 3, researchers from J&J’s Biosense Webster subsidiary presented findings from two small, single-arm studies that show the company’s devices are safe and effective at the International Atrial Fibrillation Symposium in Boston.
According to the researchers, PFA devices, which use short electrical pulses to scar heart tissue and interrupt irregular electrical pathways in the heart that cause atrial fibrillation, pose less risk of damaging surrounding tissue than current standard ablation procedures, which use heat or extreme cold.
While devices to treat the condition have been approved in Europe, the US Food and Drug Administration has yet to approve them.
Boston Scientific and Medtronic are already conducting trials in the United States.
Medtronic is also expected to release trial results for its PulseSelect system, one of the PFA devices it is developing, next month.
Medtronic acquired Affera, a company specializing in heart arrhythmias, for US$925 million last year, adding two more PFA devices to its portfolio.
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