Boston Scientific Wins Ruling

Boston Scientific Corp. will get a $167 million reduction in a patent verdict won by Medtronic Inc. after a judge threw out two of three patents in the dispute over balloons that inflate heart arteries.

Medtronic, the largest maker of heart devices, misled the US Patent and Trademark Office in order to obtain the two patents, US District Judge T. John Ward ruled in Marshall, TX. His opinion, posted yesterday on the court’s website, will cut the jury award to Minneapolis, MN-based Medtronic to about $19 million, Boston Scientific said. Medtronic said it will appeal the ruling.

A jury had found that Boston Scientific infringed three Medtronic patents for balloon catheters and systems to insert heart stents. The jury originally awarded $250 million, an amount that was later reduced to $186 million. Natick, MA-based Boston Scientific said it will appeal the remaining $19 million.

In his ruling, Ward said an in-house patent agent for Medtronic purposefully withheld information about earlier inventions, called prior art, that could have affected the analysis by the patent office examiner. He rejected Medtronic’s argument that the information wasn’t that important and said the action “exceeds that of gross negligence.”

The in-house patent agent “cultivated deliberate ignorance of what a reasonable examiner would consider material art,” Ward ruled. “To hold otherwise would condone, and in fact encourage, those with a duty of candor to act in such a manner.”