Damage Award in Patent Case Called Excessive

A jury in U.S. District Court (Wilmington, DE) has returned a verdict awarding US$324.4 million to Johnson & Johnson (J&J, New Brunswick, NJ, USA) in a patent infringement case involving Boston Scientific (Natick, MA, USA). Four days earlier, the same jury had determined that the NIR stent distributed by Boston Scientific infringes one claim of a J&J patent but found for Boston Scientific on the five other patent claims at issue.

The NIT stent was developed and is manufactured by Medinol Ltd., Jerusalem (Israel). Boston Scientific has an exclusive worldwide license to market and distribute the stent. The company develops and markets products for a broad range of interventional medical
specialties.

"We believe today's damage verdict is excessive, but it is not the final word,” said Paul Donovan, a spokesman for Boston Scientific. "Several additional stages of this process remain to be played out, and we believe in the end the lone finding of infringement will not stand. We hope to persuade the judge to set aside the infringement verdict. We will also present evidence that the Johnson & Johnson patents were improperly obtained and should therefore be unenforceable.”


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