Guidant Stent Found to Infringe Medinol Patent

Last September, Boston Scientific Corp. (Natick, MA) ended a 10-year contentious relationship with Israeli stent manufacturer Medinol Ltd. (Tel Aviv, Israel) after paying $750 million to settle a long-standing patent dispute. But now, with its acquisition of Guidant Corp. (Indianapolis) a near certainty, Boston Scientific finds itself embroiled with Medinol yet again.

In late February, a federal court in the southern district of New York ruled that a coronary stent manufactured by Guidant infringes on a Medinol patent. Although many industry analysts say Medinol's case is not particularly strong, patent infringement cases in the coronary stent sector have historically been protracted, costly struggles.

If Medinol's claim holds up, the company is expected to seek royalty payments representing as much as 20% of all infringing stent sales. Neither Guidant nor Medinol issued a public comment on the dispute, but Paul Donovan, Boston Scientific's senior vice president for corporate communications said, “We intend to fight this vigorously.”

The dispute with Medinol is yet another fire on Boston Scientific's doorstep as it scrambles to gain shareholder and regulatory approval to close the Guidant deal while moving to resolve its manufacturing quality issues with FDA.