Like many medical device companies, Johnson & Johnson ($JNJ) is waging patent battles on many fronts at once. Recently, two cases in which J&J was the defendant took interesting twists.
Stryker ($SKY) dismissed Johnson & Johnson's DePuy Orthopedics subsidiary from a patent infringement suit over its hip implant's acetabular cup. The technology features "a dual-locking mechanism and capable of accommodating a plurality of bearings with different characteristics," Stryker said in a lawsuit, according to Mass Device. J&J was part of a consolidated lawsuit fellow orthopedic companies Smith & Nephew, Wright Medical Group ($WMGI) and Zimmer ($ZMH). The latter three have asked the U.S. district judge to dismiss their case as well.
Meanwhile, on the basis of the May Supreme Court decision Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Medinol last week asked a different U.S. district judge to reverse her decision in favor of J&J amid a dispute over patents covering a now-discontinued coronary stent made by subsidiary Cordis. Earlier this year, Medinol's case was dismissed because the company waited for more than 8 years to file the suit, reports Mass Device, but Medinol says the Supreme Court decision "upended the entire laches framework upon which the judgment was based."
J&J countered that the Supreme Court decision applies to copyright law, not patent law. As of Aug. 12 there was no hearing scheduled on the Medinol request for reversal.
- read the Mass Device article about the Stryker case
- read the Mass Device article about the Medinol case