Medtronic sued over artificial heart valves
Medtronic, one of the world’s largest medical devices company, is facing a patent infringement lawsuit over its line of artificial heart valves.
In the suit, filed at the US District Court for the District of Central California, Delaware-registered Colibri Heart Valve alleged that products under Medtronic’s CoreValve brand infringed two patents (US numbers 9,125,739 and 8,900,294).
Colibri was founded in 2010 by David Paniagua and David Fish, cardiologists whose work resulted in less invasive artificial heart valves, the complaint said.
According to the suit, Colibri’s self-expanding heart valve devices can be guided through the artery to the heart, rather than installed through open heart surgery.
“Colibri has demonstrated in its early human feasibility study that its valves can deliver approximately twice as much oxygenated blood to patients as all of the existing artificial heart valves currently being implanted in patients,” the suit said.
According to Colibri, Medtronic has misappropriated its technology for its CoreValve line of self-expanding artificial heart valves.
The allegedly infringing Medtronic products include CoreValve, CoreValve Evolut R, CoreValve Evolut PRO, and CoreValve Evolut PRO+.
Colibri is seeking triple damages for what it says is Medtronic’s willful infringement of the two patents.
According to the suit, the two parties engaged in discussions about Colibri’s patent portfolio, including the patents-in-suit, in 2014, before Medtronic began commercially marketing the CoreValve products.
Medtronic posted $29.7 billion in revenues last year, making it the biggest medical devices company in the world by that metric.
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