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21 October 2016Americas

Federal Circuit denies Medtronic’s rehearing request in Bosch case

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit yesterday rejected Medtronic’s petition for a rehearing of a patent case against Bosch.

The request was an appeal from the US Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB).

In 2013, Bosch’s now-defunct healthcare unit sued Cardiocom, a subsidiary of Medtronic, in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, alleging infringement of two patents owned by Bosch.

The patents involved in the case were US numbers 7,769,605 and 7,870,249.

This was followed by Cardiocom petitioning for an inter partes review (IPR) of those two patents, but the petitions were denied in January 2014 because Cardiocom failed to show a reasonable likelihood that any of the challenged claims was unpatentable on the asserted grounds.

Medtronic then filed three petitions seeking IPR of the same two patents, but this time listed itself as the sole real party in interest.

Bosch argued that the petitions should be denied because Medtronic had failed to name Cardiocom as a real party in interest.

However, the PTAB allowed the IPR proceedings, stating that Bosch had not established that Cardiocom was a real party in interest.

Bosch later asked the board to terminate the proceedings because Medtronic had failed to name all real parties in interest.

The PTAB granted Bosch’s request because it found that Medtronic was acting as a proxy for Cardiocom.

Medtronic appealed again, but in November 2015 the Federal Circuit dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction. This was followed by a petition for the Federal Circuit to hear the case, but this has now been denied.

A spokesperson for Bosch told LSIPR that it does not comment on ongoing litigation.