A German court has issued preliminary injunctions against J.ZH.FA. Panther Healthcare Medical Equipment, WuXi Shenkang Medical Instrument Equipment and three other medical device firms accused of copying the design of Covidien's ($COV) surgical stapling products and infringing a patent owned by the company. Four of the medical device companies are based in China, while one is based in the U.K. German customs authorities also have seized accused infringing surgical stapling products from each of the five companies.
"We are pleased that the German court and customs authorities have found that certain stapling products from these five companies should be removed from the German marketplace because of infringement of Covidien's patent. We will continue to vigorously protect our innovations and intellectual property," says Scott Herring, president, EMEA Surgical Devices, Covidien.
As MassDevice notes, Covidien is growing its surgical stapling line; last week it won 510(k) clearance from the for its iDrive surgical stapling system, the first offering in its "Power Devices" portfolio.
The iDrive product is "relatively small" for Covidien--generating roughly $5 million to $10 million of incremental revenue per year--but the overall powered product line is "perhaps one of the most important new product lines that COV will introduce over the next few years," Leerink Swann analyst Rick Wise says in a note, as quoted by MassDevice.
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