A German court issued a mixed decision in the international battle over transcatheter aortic valve replacement patents between Edwards Lifesciences (NYSE:EW) and Boston Scientific (NYSE:BSX), less than a week after a U.K. patent court handed down a similar TAVR decision.
Boston Scientific fired the 1st shot late last year in Germany with a lawsuit against Edwards, alleging that the next-generation Sapien 3 infringes claims covering the outer sealing skirt of Boston’s Lotus valve. Edwards claims that the Boston patent issued after Edwards launched the Sapien 3 valve in Europe and has leveled its own suits against its rival and subsidiary Sadra Medical; Boston Scientific filed counterclaims of its own in Germany and the U.K., where the Patents Court found 1 of its patents invalid but upheld another and ruled that Edwards infringes it.
Today the companies said that the German District Court of Düsseldorf found that the Edwards Sapien 3 TAVR infringes a pair of patents covering the outer seals of Boston’s Lotus valve. The Düsseldorf court also ruled that Boston Scientific did not infringe an Edwards patent, but did infringe a different TAVR patent (although Marlborough, Mass.-based Boston said it expects the European Patent Office to revoke that patent).
“We will continue to protect our intellectual property to ensure we can continue to bring forward innovative technologies that make a meaningful difference in the lives of patients,” Boston Scientific general counsel Tim Pratt said in prepared remarks. “We are pleased with the progress we are making with litigation in Europe, and believe the strength of our intellectual property will also be upheld in U.S. cases involving the same patents.”
For its part, Edwards pledged to appeal the ruling, as it did with the U.K. patent court decision, adding that it “believes that the company will ultimately prevail.”
Boston Scientific last month recalled all Lotus devices “due to reports of premature release of a pin connecting the Lotus Valve to the delivery system.”
