US Supreme Court ends $1 billion patent dispute

The US Supreme Court has declined to hear manufacturer W L Gore & Associates’s request for clarity on whether US patent law stipulates that patent licensing agreements must be placed in writing.

In a decision handed down yesterday, October 5, the court said it would not consider the long-running dispute between Gore and medical device maker Bard Medical.

In 2003, Bard sued Gore at the US District Court for the District of Arizona accusing it of infringing its patent, US number 6,436,135.

The patent covers prosthetic vascular grafts. The grafts are made of highly-expanded polytetrafluoroethylene, or ePTFE.

Gore markets a product using the material called Gore-Tex.

Inventor David Goldfarb applied for the patent in 1974. In 1980, Goldfarb agreed a licensing agreement with Bard.

But Gore argued that because there was no written record of the agreement between the two parties, Bard had no grounds to sue to for infringement.

But the district court was not convinced and said Gore had infringed the patent.

Bard was originally awarded $185 million in damages in 2007, although subsequent amounts, including royalties and interest, have since been added to the sum bringing the total damages award to $1 billion.

The federal circuit upheld the decision in January 2015, despite a split among the three-judge panel.

In its petition to the Supreme Court Gore asked whether US patent law “requires that a grant or conveyance of an exclusive patent licensing be in writing?”

But the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

A spokesperson for Gore told LSIPR that it is disappointed with the decision.