A quartet of medical companies agreed yesterday to bury the hatchet in their 6-year-old battle over the patent covering drug-eluting stent technology.
Wyeth, now part of Pfizer (NYSE:PFE), and onetime Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) subsidiary Cordis (which this week became a part of Cardinal Health), sued Abbott (NYSE:ABT) and Boston Scientific (NYSE:BSX) in 2009, alleging that Abbott’s Xience V and Boston’s Promus drug-eluting stents infringed patents covering the Cypher stent made by Cordis using a Wyeth coating.
The suit was triggered when the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office issued Patent No. 7,591,844 — “Medical devices, drug coatings and methods for maintaining the drug coating thereon” — to Wyeth and Cordis back on Sept. 22, 2009. The companies filed suit the next day.
Coupled with previous patent claims, the companies argued that Abbott’s Xience V stent infringes on the new patent and sought to bar future Xience sales as well as trying to recoup any lost sales revenues (Boston Scientific was pulled into the dispute because it sold the Xience V under its Promus private label).
In a filing yesterday with the U.S. District Court for New Jersey, the parties agreed to stipulate to the dismissal with prejudice of all claims, with bearing its own legal costs.
