JNJ Scores a Win: Supreme Court Won’t Hear Patent Infringement Case

On Jan. 27, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from Bruce Saffran, M.D., a radiologist who wanted the highest court in the land to reinstate patent infringement award worth nearly $600 million against Johnson & Johnson’s Cordis subsidiary. The patent covers a device, such as a stent, where the direction of the medicine released is controlled with chemical bonds and can be targeted to a specific body site. While Saffran’s invention focused on broken bones, he argued the invention also was used in stents, He sued JNJ in 2007.

In January 2011 a district court jury found that Cordis, in making its Cypher brand of drug-eluting stent, infringed upon the 1997 patent filed by Saffran. Stents are tiny mesh tubes used to prop open vessels once blockages have been removed. The award was the ninth-largest patent verdict in U.S. history, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. With more than $111 million in interest, the amount J&J was told to pay reached $593.4 million.

A federal circuit court overturned the district court’s ruling in April 2013. Monday’s Supreme Court decision not to hear the case leaves the federal circuit court’s decision intact. The appeals court said the judge overseeing the trial misinterpreted Bruce Saffran’s patent and that, under the correct definition of key terms, JNJ’s Cordis unit wasn’t using his invention. Saffran’s patent deals with ways to treat injured tissue with the use of a permeable barrier.

New Brunswick, N.J.-based JNJ, once a leader in the controversial stent business, exited the market in 2011 and stopped manufacturing the Cypher stent.

Saffran also has sued Abbott Labs and Boston Scientific over the same patent.

JNJ did not respond to emails asking for comment.