Life Spine announced that a U.S. Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit, sided with it in its patent litigation with Globus Medical (NYSE:GMED).
Huntley, Illinois-based Life Spine says the court rejected Globus’ last remaining patent claim against Life Spine. As a result, the company says it “has now successfully defeated all of Globus’s infringement claims.”
In 2021, Globus alleged that Life Spine’s ProLift line of solutions infringed on its patents. Life Spine challenged Globus’ assertions, receiving a decision from the U.S. Patent Trial & Appeal Board (PTAB) in 2024 that cancelled all claims from four patents alleged to be infringed.
However, a jury trial last year on Globus’ remaining patent claims still found Life Spine liable for infringing one of two remaining patents. A federal jury in Delaware determined that Life Spine must pay Globus $9.5 million. This related to Globus’ U.S. Patent No. 8,845,731 (the 731 patent). The patent covers an expandable fusion device capable of being installed inside an intervertebral disc space to maintain normal disc spacing and restore spinal stability. This facilitates an intervertebral fusion.
Now, Life Spine says the federal appeals court held that Globus’ final infringement claims were based on an invalid patent. According to court documents, the decision found that the wedges in the Life Spine expandable fusion device were “complementary.”
“This is a defining result for Life Spine,” said Rich Mueller, president & CEO of Life Spine. “We have always believed in the strength of our innovation and the ProLift platform. This outcome confirms what we’ve known from the beginning—that these claims lacked merit and that our technology stands on solid ground. More importantly, we remain focused on what matters most: delivering better outcomes for patients and surgeons.”
