Johnson & Johnson Stent Judgment Set at $1.2 Billion

Johnson & Johnson said a US judge has awarded the company $1.2 billion in an 11-year patent battle with Medtronic Inc. and Boston Scientific Corp. over devices that prop open heart arteries after they’re cleared of fat.

Medtronic was ordered to pay about $521 million and Boston Scientific to pay about $703 million in the dispute over the patent for the Palmaz balloon expandable stent, according to the judgment entered in the US District Court in Wilmington, DE, Johnson & Johnson said in a statement on PR Newswire.

The judgments entered by Judge Sue Robinson augment with accrued interest eight-year-old post-trial damages awards of $324 million against Natick, MA-based Boston Scientific and $271 million against Minneapolis, MN-based Medtronic.

The companies had been fighting over the basic technology for heart stents, tiny mesh tubes inserted in arteries. Johnson & Johnson’s patents have expired and the specific stents involved in the case are no longer sold, yet the companies were still arguing over details about the patents and the question of whether a new trial on damages should be held.

“We have no further comment other than to say we will appeal,” Boston Scientific spokesman Paul Donovan said by phone.

On Sept. 15, Robinson reinstated the awards and refused to grant a new trial in a case where four trials already have been held over liability and two over damages.

“This one has largely run its course,” Medtronic spokesman Daniel Beach said in a telephone interview. The company, which took a charge against some of its liability in the third quarter of its fiscal 2008, may yet appeal the interest award, he said.

“It is apparent from the papers submitted that the appropriate method of calculating prejudgment interest based on after-tax damages is fraught with opportunities for mischief,” Robinson wrote in a two-page order. She said she computed the final award using the approach advanced by lawyers for New Brunswick, NJ-based Johnson & Johnson’s Cordis Corp.

SOURCE: Bloomberg