Court orders Boston Scientific to pay $431M in stent patent dispute

Boston Scientific’s DES patent under investigation. Source: Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation

A U.S. District Court jury in Marshall, Texas, has ordered Boston Scientific to pay Bruce Saffran, MD, damages of $431 million in a patent infringement suit.

The jury found that Boston Scientific’s Taxus Express and Taxus Liberte drug-eluting stent products infringe Saffran's patent and that the patent is valid.

Saffran, a radiologist who obtained a patent for a drug-delivery device in 1997, is not asking to stop sales of the product, but does have a similar case pending against Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary Cordis, according to his lawyer Eric Albritton.

In response, the Natick, Mass.-based company plans to seek to overturn the verdict in post-trial motions before the District Court and, if unsuccessful, to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

“The company believes the jury verdict is unsupported by both the evidence and the law,” according to a statement by Boston Scientific.

“We do not intend to record a charge at this time because we believe we will prevail on appeal,'' Boston Scientific President Paul Donovan told Bloomberg News.