Medtronic Inc. (NYSE:MDT) won a round in its patent fight against Edwards Lifesciences Inc. (NYSE:EW), as the medical device giants prepare for a showdown in the U.S. District Court for Delaware in late March over a patent involving an aortic valve replacement.
The Appellate Court of Düsseldorf, Germany, upheld a German lower court’s ruling that Medtronic’s CoreValve transcatheter aortic valve does not infringe on Edwards Lifesciences’s German patent.
The CoreValve system is designed to enable the replacement of a diseased aortic valve without open heart surgery. Edwards claimed the technology infringed on a patent it held in Germany and has filed similar suits in the U.K. and the U.S.