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23 February 2017Americas

SCOTUS declines Boston Scientific appeal in defibrillator dispute

The US Supreme Court has declined to review an appeal by Boston Scientific, which had been ordered to pay Maryland-based Mirowski Family Ventures $309 million in a patent dispute covering a defibrillator.

Boston Scientific, which lost a jury trial atMaryland’s Montgomery County Circuit Court in September 2014, had asked the Supreme Court to hear its appeal over technology owned by Mirowski.

It argued that the Maryland court made mistakes when applying patent law.

The dispute arose when Mirowski sued Boston Scientific, accusing it of not paying all the royalties it owed the company after Boston Scientific acquired Guidant Corp, which had licensed the patents from Mirowski.

Before asking the Supreme Court to hear its case, Boston Scientific also asked the Court of Special Appeals of Maryland to review the case, but it  affirmed the ruling of the circuit court.

The product in dispute, an implantable cardiac defibrillator, was developed by Michel Mirowski, who later further developed the cardiac equipment with “cardiac resynchronisation therapy”.

The inventions are covered by US patent numbers 4,407,288 and RE38,119.

Mirowski Family Ventures originally licensed the two patents exclusively to Guidant and was entitled to 3% royalty on sales.

However the circuit court had found that Boston Scientific owed royalties from 2002 to 2003, an also ordered the company to pay damages for breaching a licensing agreement.