AGA Medical Holdings to Pay Medtronic $35M in Patent Settlement

AGA Medical Holdings Inc. has agreed to pay Medtronic Inc. $35 million in a patent infringement lawsuit alleging that almost all of AGA’s AMPLATZER occluder and vascular plug devices infringe Medtronic’s Jervis patent family, the Plymouth, Minn., firm said.

The payments will be made to Medtronic in amount of $35 million over four years with the final payment due in January 2014.

“We are pleased to have reached this agreement, which eliminates much of the expense and uncertainty associated with the litigation and enables the company to focus its resources and attention on providing patients with innovative devices to treat significant medical conditions,” said AGA Medical President and CEO John Barr.

Patents in the Jervis patent family, the last of which is scheduled to expire in 2018, cover the use of stress to restrain certain self-expanding medical devices made of nitinol, a shape-memory metal alloy frequently used in medical device applications, including Medtronic’s transcatheter coronary heart valve program, Medtronic, which is based in Minneapolis, Minn., said.

This settlement accounts for all existing products, as well as new products developed and commercialized by AGA Medical that use nitinol for the entire term of the patents, according to AGA.