A federal appeals court dealt a blow to Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) yesterday when it upheld a lower court’s decision to award $10 million to the physician inventor of a patent involving catheters.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed an Oklahoma jury’s verdict issued early last year to order Medtronic to pay $9.9 million in back royalties for willfully infringing on a guidance catheter patent owned by Dr. Jan Voda.
Voda invented new guiding catheters for delivering balloon devices and stents in the early 1990s and won patents in 2000, according to court documents.
Medtronic’s EBU guiding catheters, Voda argued, infringe existing patents. The Fridley, Minn.-based med-tech titan continued to sell and promote the EBU line after Voda informed them of the infringement, according to the documents.
A jury in the U.S. District Court for Western Oklahoma ruled that Voda’s patents are valid and that Medtronic’s infringement was willful.
Medtronic is not the only med-tech titan Voda’s sued for infringement, according to court documents. In 2003, he successfully sued Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) subsidiary Cordis Corp. for infringement of the same guiding catheter patents. Voda won again when Cordis took the case to the Federal Circuit appeals court.