A Medical Device Daily

Datasci (Malvern, Pennsylvania) and Documents Solutions Group (DSG; location) said they have agreed to settle a pending patent infringement action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland relating to Datasci's U.S. Patent No. 6,496,827.

The patent infringement action against DSG is being dismissed. The remaining terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

"We are very pleased that this lawsuit is dismissed, and our current customer base and prospects will be excited to know that this lawsuit is behind us so we can put all our energies toward our customers and products in the life sciences industry," said Tony Varano, CEO of DSG. "We have exciting expansion plans including several major customer deals in Japan and the opening of two new offices in Europe later in 2007 that we've been working on and will be announcing soon."

DSG supports clinical trial data collection with technology solutions including EDC, electronic patient diaries and digital on-demand CRF publishing management software.

In other legalities:

• Iridex (Mountain View, California) reported that U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry has ruled on all outstanding summary motions in its patent infringement suit against Synergetics USA (O'Fallon, Missouri). Iridex said Perry ruled that it is entitled to summary judgment on each of Synergetics' non-patent counter-claims of false advertising, defamation and injurious falsehood.

Additionally, the court granted Iridex's motion to compel the production of additional Synergetics documents that Synergetics had asserted were protected by the attorney-client privilege. The court also allowed Synergetics to withdraw its recent motion to add anti-trust counterclaims to the case, and denied Synergetics' motion to take additional discovery.

The suit was filed in 2005, with Iridex claiming that a Synergetics' adapter infringes its patent.

In response to the suit, Synergetics in July 2006 said it had designed a different connector system to interface its laser probe products to Iridex laser sources (Medical Device Daily, July 26, 2006).

The trial is set for April 16, Iridex said.

• A cardiologist has resigned his staff privileges at an Eastern Shore hospital as officials continue to investigate whether he performed unnecessary stent procedures. John McLean, MD, resigned his privileges at Peninsula Regional Medical Center (Salisbury, Maryland), citing visual impairment as a disability, hospital officials said.

McLean resigned after a hospital review found that at least 25 of his patients received arterial stents last year, despite not meeting the generally accepted medical criteria for such procedures.

Tom Lawrence, MD, VP of medical affairs and chief medical officer for PRMC, said guidelines from the Amercan College of Cardiology (Washington) generally call for stents when arterial blockages reach 70%. Among the 25 patients in question, arterial blockages ranged from about 35% to 60%, he said.

Lawrence said officials are still reviewing procedures done by McLean in 2006. Based on their findings, the investigation may expand to other years as well, he said.

McLean suggested that a recently diagnosed eye problem may have caused him to misread patients' diagnostic images.