A federal appeals court upheld a $41 million verdict for Boston Scientific over erstwhile arch-rival Cordis Corp., the Johnson & Johnson subsidiary that ceded the coronary stent market in 2011.
The Natick, Mass.-based medical device company and its Scimed unit sued Cordis in 2009 over a patent covering stent technology. A jury awarded Boston Scientific a $20 million win in 2011, which was later doubled by a Delaware federal judge.
Cordis appealed, but earlier this month the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the decision, according to court documents.
The lawsuit involves 2.25mm stents – at the time Cordis and BSX make the only such models available in the U.S. The firms sued each other in early 2003, each alleging patent infringement. A jury eventually ruled for BSX, finding that Cordis’ Cypher and BX Velocity stents were in violation of the patent. The decision was upheld on appeal, leaving the damages portion to be decided by another jury (a settlement allowed Cordis to keep making the stents pending the outcome of the case).
Judge Susan Robinson of the U.S. District Court for Delaware in 2012 doubled the jury award, handing a $40 million loss to Cordis. An appeal to the Federal Circuit was denied Feb. 12, according to the documents, when the appeals bench affirmed Robinson’s ruling.
The Boston-against-Cordis front in the long-running Stent Wars is winding down, now that Cordis has been out of the coronary stents game for more than a year (it’s still in the peripheral stent business). The J&J division abandoned the coronary segment to its rivals in June 2011, citing the downward pricing spiral and increased competition. Cordis aborted its next-generation Nevo drug-eluting stent program and had stopped making the Cypher DES line altogether by the end of 2011.