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10 August 2021MedtechAlex Baldwin

7th Circuit won’t overturn spinal implant injunction

The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has upheld a preliminary injunction from an Illinois court that blocked medical device maker Aegis Spine from selling its spinal implant.

Aegis had petitioned to overturn the injunction, which was ordered by the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois as part of a trade secret theft suit bought by competitor Life Spine.

Life Spine filed a complaint with the court in August 2020 alleging that Aegis Spine had stolen trade secrets related to its ProLift spinal implant product to implement into its own competing product.

The appellate court rejected Aegis’ argument that the trade secrets were not protected as they were publicly available through patent disclosures.

Writing for the panel, US circuit judge Amy St Eve said: “As a legal matter, we do not dispute—nor does Life Spine—that information in the public domain cannot be a trade secret.

“But the issue here is factual: did Life Spine publicly disclose the specific information that it seeks to protect by patenting, displaying, and selling the ProLift? The district court found that the answer was no.”

Case history

In October 2017, while Aegis and its parent company L&K were planning the launch of a new expandable cage product, Aegis contacted Life Spine asking to serve as a distributor for its ProLift spinal implant.

As part of the discussion, Aegis asked Life Spine for a ProLift device, claiming that customers wanted to see it for “demonstration purposes”.

A formal distribution agreement was signed in January 2018, allowing Aegis to solicit sales of the ProLift from a list of surgeons, which included two surgeons who had agreed to help L&K develop a competing spinal implant—the AccelFix‐XT.

Life Spine claims that Aegis and L&K would receive feedback from the surgeon customers and incorporate it into the design process of their own spinal implant competitor.

The distribution agreement between Life Spine and Aegis officially expired on August 31, 2018.

In March 2019, L&K applied for approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the AccelFix‐XT, which featured “essentially identical” key measurements to the ProLift.

In August 2020, Life Spine moved for a preliminary injunction shortly after learning of the AccelFix-XT. The district court held a nine‐day hearing on the motion and granted the preliminary injunction.

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More on this story

Americas
14 October 2021   Medical device company, Globus Medical, has filed a lawsuit against competitor Life Spine, alleging infringement of seven different patents related to spinal tech implant technology.
Biotechnology
19 December 2023   Medical device company wins eight-day jury trial in spinal implant patent dispute | Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon claimed Globus Medical directly infringed multiple patents in US | Susman Godfrey | Fish & Richardson.
Biotechnology
31 October 2023   RSB Spine files patent infringement lawsuit against competitors over spinal implant products | Plaintiff claims the defendants had knowledge of patent infringement.