A Medical Device Daily

Boston Scientific (Natick, Massachusetts) said that a U.S. District Court judge in Delaware issued a ruling up-holding a July 2005 jury verdict in a drug-eluting stent patent case against the Cordis (Miami Lakes, Florida) unit of Johnson & Johnson (J&J; New Brunswick, New Jersey).

The ruling denies Cordis' motion to overturn the verdict, in which the jury had found that the company's Cypher stent infringed Boston Scientific's drug-coating patent, the Ding patent. The jury had also found the patent, which claims a two-layer drug coating on a drug-eluting stent, to be valid.

Cordis said it would appeal the decision by U.S. District Court Judge Sue Robinson.

Paul LaViolette, Boston Scientific chief operating officer, said the ruling “reaffirms the strength and innovation of our drug-eluting stent technologies.”

In its statement, Cordis said the decision is the third in a series of decisions by Judge Robinson in the past six weeks regarding patent disputes between the two companies. In the first decision, said Cordis, Robinson upheld a jury verdict from June 2005 that found Boston Scientific's Taxus stent and its Libert and Express bare-metal stents infringe Cordis' Palmaz patent for balloon-expandable stents, and that the Libert stent also infringes another Cordis patent – the Gray patent – that relates to flexible balloon-expandable stents and expires in 2016. The Palmaz patent has expired.

In the second decision, Robinson upheld the portion of a July 2005 jury verdict that found Boston Scientific's Jang patent to be valid and infringed, under the doctrine of equivalents, by Cordis' Cypher sirolimus-eluting coronary stent and Bx Velocity family of stent products. The Jang patent claims specific stent geometry.

Robinson did not set dates for trials to determine damages in any of the cases.

Cordis said it would appeal Robinson's decisions on the Jang and Ding patents to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington.