A Medical Device Daily

Align Technology (Santa Clara, California) said Friday that a jury had ruled that its Invisalign teeth-straightening system infringed on a patent held by Ormco (Orange, California), a Danaher (Washington) subsidiary.

The verdict could potentially give Ormco the right to block sales of Invisalign and demand a royalty on all U.S. sales of the Invisalign aligners since January 2003, but Align said it would seek to overturn the verdict and appeal to a higher court.

A jury in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California found that Align infringed on an Ormco patent covering a process for making a three-dimensional representation of the teeth, the companies said. The jury also found the patent to be valid.

Ormco alleged that Align infringed claims of Ormco's 6,616,444 patent. Align claimed non-infringement, invalidity, as well as unenforceability of the patent.

The jury found the claims asserted by Ormco in the 6,616,444 patent to be infringed and valid. The jury also issued an advisory verdict that Ormco did not engage in prosecution laches or unclean hands, equitable defenses that the Court will rule on at a later date. The jury only determined liability; any monetary damages will be determined in a later trial. The verdict does not currently preclude Align from selling its Invisalign System.

"We have long maintained that Align's process for creating aligners used our intellectual property and that the attacks on the enforceability of our patent claims were unfounded," said Don Tuttle, president of Ormco in a company statement on the verdict.