The Wall Street Journal-20080213-Boston Scientific Loses Verdict

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Boston Scientific Loses Verdict

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In the latest decision in the far-flung legal wrangle over heart stents, a jury ruled Boston Scientific Corp. infringed on a New Jersey radiologist's patent and awarded him $431.9 million in damages.

The Natick, Mass., medical-device maker said the verdict, in a U.S. district court in Marshall, Texas, was "unsupported by both the evidence and the law." A spokesman said the company wouldn't record a charge because Boston Scientific expects the presiding judge or an appeals court to throw out the verdict.

Heart stents include several parts -- mechanical gadgetry to place a scaffold inside a clogged artery, a polymer coating that slowly releases a drug, and the drug itself, which prevents an artery from reclogging. Each part is the subject of numerous patents owned by big companies and independent researchers.

The Texas case, filed in 2005, involved Boston Scientific's Taxus Express and Taxus Liberte stents, both drug-coated. In it, Bruce Saffran, of Princeton, N.J., alleged Boston Scientific had infringed upon his 1997 patent for a thin sheet of fabric that could deliver medication to injured body parts.

"We are just very pleased that the jury saw it our way," said attorney Eric Albritton, who is also representing Dr. Saffran in another stent-related infringement suit against Johnson & Johnson in the same federal court. A Johnson & Johnson spokeswoman said the claims in that case are without merit and the company will contest them.

The major players in the $4 billion stent market -- Boston Scientific, Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic Inc., and Abbott Laboratories -- are all suing each other for patent infringement. The companies have sued to prevent competitors from introducing new stents and to claim royalties on each other's devices. Boston Scientific alone is involved in more than 15 pending patent lawsuits.

Such disputes can last more than decade. In 2000, a jury awarded Johnson & Johnson $324 million from Boston Scientific and $271 million from Medtronic. The companies were found to have infringed J&J's patents on the first heart stent, invented in the 1980s, but because of appeals, the verdicts still haven't been finalized.

Last October, J&J won another jury verdict against Boston Scientific involving the tiny balloons used to expand clogged arteries. No dollar amount was set, but Boston Scientific announced last week that it had recorded a $365 million charge in probable patent-litigation losses. The company wouldn't clarify whether the verdict was the reason.