BUSINESS NEWS
In July, St. Jude Medical Inc. (St. Paul, MN) and Boston Scientific Corp. (Natick, MA) settled four patent litigation matters relating to the companies' cardiology and neurology products. Each company agreed to cross-license certain aspects of their patent portfolios in these areas.
Last October, Utah Medical Products Inc. (UTMD; Midvale, UT) successfully defended itself against FDA charges that the company had failed to comply with the agency's quality system regulation. But in February, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services denied the company's allegation of abuse of process and refused its request for restitution of litigation costs and lost profits. In July, UTMD requested that HHS reconsider the case.
A U.S. district court jury ruled in August that BlueSky Medical Group Inc. (Carlsbad, CA) did not infringe on patents covering the vacuum-assisted closure system manufactured by Kinetic Concepts Inc. (San Antonio, TX). Although the verdict rejected KCI's claims of infringement, it explicitly upheld the validity of KCI's patents. KCI has announced that it will appeal the verdict.
