A federal appeals court yesterday upheld a win for Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) in a patent dispute over its CoreValve aortic valve replacement with inventor Dr. Troy Norred, according to legal filings.
The physician’s 2013 patent infringement lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for Kansas, was stayed until a trio of inter partes reviews by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office’s Patent Trial & Appeals Board were concluded, according to court documents.
The PTAB reviews found that 16 of Norred’s claims were unpatentable, upholding Medtronic’s challenge to the patent, PTO records show.
The patent board ruled that the patent was invalid as anticipated based on prior art cited in the patent application. Norred appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, claiming that CoreValve used his patent in developing the aortic valve replacement and that Medtronic continued to infringe the patent after acquiring CoreValve for $700 million in 2009.
Yesterday the Federal Circuit court denied Norred’s appeal without comment.
In May 2014, Medtronic and TAVI arch-rival Edwards Lifesciences (NYSE:EW) buried the hatchet in their long-running patent war with a $750 million settlement that will see Medtronic pay royalties through April 2022 of at least $40 million annually.