Former Spectranetics (NSDQ:SPNC) CEO John Schulte was sentenced May 29 to a year of probation after being convicted in March on a single count of lying to federal investigators about his role in the allegedly illegal importation of laser medical devices for a clinical trial.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office had recommended that he be sentenced to 2 years in prison and 3 years of probation, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette.
A jury acquitted Schulte of 11 other charges including conspiracy to defraud the federal government.
Spectranetics agreed to pay $5 million and admitted responsibility late in 2009 to settle its portion of the case, after federal agents raided its Colorado Springs headquarters in 2008. Schulte resigned a few weeks after the raid and was indicted in 2010, along with 3 other defendants – former vice president of business development Obinna "Larry" Adighije, former business development manager Trung Pham and consultant Hernan Ricuarte.
Pham was acquitted of the 5 charges against him, including conspiring to defraud the federal government and smuggling unapproved medical devices into the country, according to the Gazette. Prosecutors later dropped all 5 charges against Adighije, according to the newspaper. Ricuarte pleaded guilty in August to a single count of concealing a felony. He faces between 3 months of probation and 6 months in prison and between $250 and $250,000 in fines, but prosecutors are expected to seek probation for him as well, according to the newspaper.
Supremes back Siemens in Saint-Gobain spat
The U.S. Supreme Court backed Siemens AG (ETR:SIE) in a patent dispute with Saint-Gobain SA (EPA:SGO), upholding a lower court’s $44.9 million verdict.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit had ruled that the award may need to be boosted to account for other Saint-Gobain products that infringed the patent, ordering a lower court to reconsider the damages.
The European rivals were fighting over crystals used to convert gamma rays to light for three-dimensional imaging technology.
Saint-Gobain supplies the crystals for 79 scanner models made by Philips Medical Systems (NYSE:PHG), which wasn’t named in the case. The appeals court ruled last year that the lower court’s decision should have covered another 18 of those scanners, not just the 61 Philips models dealt with in the original decision.
