Medtronic unit to pay $106.5 million in heart valve feud
Jury rules that a medical device infringes a pair of Colibri patents | Medtronic fails to prove patent was invalid.
Medtronic’s CoreValve unit has been ordered to pay medical device company Colibri nearly $106.5 million after infringing patents related to artificial heart valves.
On Wednesday, February 8, a federal jury in California decided that the company had infringed Colibri Heart Valve’s inventions and failed to prove that its patents were invalid, resulting in the hefty damages award.
Colorado-based Colibri, which was founded in 2010 by leading cardiologists David Paniagua and David Fish, makes artificial heart valves and develops treatment methods that offer a less invasive alternative to open heart surgery.
The duo’s inventions include a self-expanding heart valve device that can be guided through a patient’s artery to the heart where it is positioned and used to replace diseased valves.
Colibri was awarded US patent numbers 9,125,739 and 8,900,294 for this system.
The firm said that it had “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”.
‘Wilful infringement’
Colibri alleged that Medtronic, the world’s largest medical device company, had infringed these patents through its transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) products CoreValve, CoreValve Evolut R, CoreValve Evolut Pro, and CoreValve Evolut Pro+ Systems.
Like Colibri’s systems, these products also include a transcathetor aortic valve and delivery catheter system.
According to the original complaint, Medtronic and Colibri met in 2014, when Colibri’s CEO Joseph Horn gave a presentation about the firm’s heart valve developments under the protection of a non-disclosure agreement. The firm contends that details of Colibri’s patent applications and portfolio were discussed.
Colibri sought triple damages in light of Medtronic’s knowledge and wilful infringement of the patents.
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