A Medical Device Daily
AngioDynamics (Queensbury, New York) has filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware against Diomed (Andover, Massachusetts), seeking a judgment declaring that the claims of Diomed's recently issued 6,981,971 patent, titled “Medical Laser Device,“ are invalid, unenforceable and not infringed by the manufacture or sale of AngioDynamics' VenaCure system.
The 6,981,971 patent relates to a medical device that includes graduated markings along a sheath used in endovenous laser treatments. And in a recent announcement, Diomed stated that AngioDynamics is offering marked introducer sheaths embraced by the allowed patent application that is now the 6,981,971 patent.
“AngioDynamics is proactively responding to Diomed's allegations by seeking a swift ruling from the court that the patent in question is invalid, unenforceable and not infringed by AngioDynamics,“ said Eamonn Hobbs, president and CEO of AngioDynamics. “The declaratory judgment action supports our strong conviction that the patent is invalid and cannot be enforced, and we are confident of a favorable ruling by the court.“
In January 2004, Diomed, a subsidiary of Diomed Holdings, filed a lawsuit against AngioDynamics alleging patent infringement related to that company's VenaCure product line. VenaCure is a laser system used for the treatment of severe varicose veins. The lawsuit involves a single U.S. patent, No. 6,398,777, covering a specific method of endo-vascular laser treatment of varicose veins. The '777 law suit is a separate and ongoing case relating to the VenaCure system.
AngioDynamics makes therapeutic and diagnostic devices for the treatment of peripheral vascular diseases and other non-coronary diseases.
In other legalities:
• Genetic Technologies (GTG; Melbourne, Australia) reported that via a settlement agreement executed in December, the Northern California District Court formally dismissed the lawsuit between it and Applera (Norwalk, Connecticut) on Dec. 30, 2005.
As previously disclosed, the final settlement included Applera taking a license to the GTG non-coding patents, and making payments to GTG in the form of cash, equipment, reagents and intellectual property, totaling about A$15 million.
Overall, GTG said it now has favorably resolved six law suits involving its non-coding patents. “There is now no party anywhere in the world challenging the GTG patents,“ it said.
GTG reported that it has so far executed 24 commercial licenses to its non-coding patents, for a total consideration of about A$53M.
GTG develops applications for “non-coding“ DNA in genetic analysis and gene mapping, it says, “across all genes in all multicellular species.“