U.S. District Court Judge Dennis Saylor ruled this month to put a hold on a patent infringement lawsuit between patient monitoring device makers Body Science, St. Jude Medical (NYSE:STJ) and a slate of other device makers in order to give regulators at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office time to review the patents in question.
Texas device maker Body Science filed lawsuits against a handful of companies it claims are infringing on its patents for "Wireless Medical Diagnosis and Monitoring Equipment," according to legal documents.
The alleged infringement applies to pacemakers, ICDs and CRT devices with sensors that monitor heart activity and wirelessly transmit data to local data storage systems.
St. Jude was added to the infringement roster in November 2012, joining Philips (NYSE:PHG), Boston Scientific (NYSE:BSX) and Polar Electro, whose cases were transferred from various jurisdictions to a federal court in Massachusetts.
That month Philips won a motion to stay the lawsuit, pending the re-examination of the allegedly infringed patents by the USPTO. In December 2012 Judge Saylor ruled that the stay apply to all related Body Science cases, and this month he ruled that the case against St. Jude, which was transfered to the court more recently, also be stayed.