Jury: AGA Medical Corp. Must Pay $57M to Medtronic Inc.

A federal U.S. district court jury in San Francisco, Calif., has awarded $57 million in past damages to Medtronic Inc. in a patent infringement lawsuit, finding that AGA Medical Corp.’s manufacture, sale and use of its Amplatzer Occluder and vascular plug product lines infringed claims of two U.S. patents owned by the Minneapolis, Minn.-based firm.

The jury also ordered that Plymouth, Minn.-based AGA pay Medtronic a royalty of 11 percent on future U.S. sales of the infringing products through 2018.

A second, non-jury phase of the trial dealing with other issues of invalidity and unenforceability of the Medtronic patents, which could affect the final outcome, has been scheduled for later this year.

Medtronic is also asserting these same patents against Newark, Del.-based W.L. Gore & Associates Inc. in another case scheduled to begin Aug. 31 in the same U.S. district court.