Big Patent Paydays for Pennsylvania Doctor

Posted by Henry M. Sneath, a principal, shareholder and IP Group Chairman at Picadio Sneath Miller & Norton, P.C. in Pittsburgh, Pa.

At the other end of the Commonwealth, there are some big paydays for a patent holder who developed a drug coated arterial stent. While a medical resident, interventional radiologist Bruce Saffran developed technology that resulted in three patents for this drug delivering arterial stent system. This is his second large verdict against major medical companies. This time, a Marshall Texas Jury awarded $482,000,000 against Johnson and Johnson and its subsidiary Cordis Corp for Patent infringement. He has previously hit Boston Scientific for $431,000,000, but settled for $50,000,000. Don’t cry however for J&J/Cordis as they are  alleged to have sold over $13,000,000,000 in these stents.  This seems to be the price of doing business these days when your due diligence on the openness of the marketplace to your product is poor or incorrect, your assessment of the patent holder’s patent validity is incorrect, or if your design around just doesn’t go far enough around. We will follow the case for any post trial opinions or posting of trial transcripts to see if there is a way to determine more details about the case and whether these issues played a part. There were some interesting pre-trial rulings on Daubert Motions and Markman Claim Construction which are interesting reading.  See below.

Here are some rulings from the court on the eve of trial in response to the Daubert motions: http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=1316670698427000974&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr

Here is the court’s opinion on Markman issues including an analysis of the difficult state of claim construction on “means plus function” issues: http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=4276281445267303239&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr