Medtronic has issued a press release relating to a ruling by a court in Mannheim Germany that its CoreValve® Transcatheter Valve System infringes a patent owned by Edwards Lifesciences. Suffice it to say they’re not happy.
Background
The IP status of the two heavyweights in Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implants (TAVI) have provided interesting spectator sport for many months now. In the US last November, CoreValve was found to have infringed Edwards Lifesciences’ Sapien patent, the so-called Anderson patent. Now the German court has ruled that it infringes the so-called Spenser patent, although Medtronic, among others, is challenging the validity of that patent.
Medtronic, Inc. says it “respectfully disagrees” with the German court’s decision and intends to appeal.
Today’s decision affects commercial sales of the CoreValve System only in Germany and the company is at lengths to state that it does not anticipate any interruption to the global supply of the Medtronic CoreValve System outside of Germany.
The real reason for issuing a press release is to deal with any investor disquiet. To this end Medtronic states that its revenue from the affected products in Germany was less than 0.5 percent of its total revenue in fiscal year 2013.
As such it doesn’t believe the decision and the resulting sales impact for the remainder of its fiscal year will be material to its fiscal 2014 financial results.
The full release can be found here.
Source: Medtronic, Inc.