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A Texas jury has ruled that Boston Scientific?s drug-coated stents infringe a 1997 patent issued to a Princeton, N.J., radiologist and has awarded the inventor $431 million in damages, Boston Scientific said Tuesday morning. The suit by the patent holder, Dr. Bruce N. Saffran, did not seek to halt sales of the stents.
Boston Scientific, based in Natick, Mass., said that it would first try to overturn the decision in post-trial motions in the federal court in Marshall, Tex., where the case was heard and the jury reached its verdict late Monday.
If that effort fails, the company said, it expects to be able to
appeal the outcome successfully in the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in Washington.
The company said that because it was confident it would win on appeal, it did not plan to set aside money to pay the damages award. Boston Scientific?s shares were up 11 cents Tuesday, closing at $12.52.
Dr. Saffran?s patent primarily described how fractures could be healed more quickly if a thin, flexible sheet of material with tiny pores is used to control the flow of large molecules into and out of the wounded bone. But it also described how the invention could apply to stents, which are used to prop open arteries after blockages have been cleared.
The patent said that Dr. Saffran?s porous ?sheet,? when wrapped around a bare metal stent, could control delivery of drugs to a blood vessel wall. Boston Scientific?s drug-eluting stents ? the Taxus Express, introduced in 2004, and the yet-to-be-released Liberté ? accomplish the same thing with drug-infused layers of polymer on top of a metal stent.
Dr. Saffran filed his infringement lawsuit against Boston Scientific in 2005. He recently filed a similar lawsuit against Boston Scientific?s main rival, the Cordis division of Johnson & Johnson.
Eric M. Albritton, one of Dr. Saffran?s lawyers, declined to comment when asked whether Dr. Saffran contends his patent also covers Medtronic?s Endeavor stent, which recently gained regulatory approval, or Abbott Labortories? Xience V, a drug-coated stent regulators are expected to approve later this year.