A Medical Device Daily

Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione (Chicago) reported that the firm has won a decisive victory on behalf of its long-time client Cook (Bloomington, Indiana) in a patent infringement case brought by Edwards Lifesciences (Irvine, California) and EndoGAD Research. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the previous ruling of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California that Cook devices do not infringe Edwards' and EndoGAD's patents for endovascular devices to treat aneurysms.

The case involved four of Cook's Zenith endovascular grafts used in treating abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAAs) and thoracic aortic aneurysms (TAAs) without the need for traumatic open-repair surgery.

The Federal Circuit reaffirmed the District Court's ruling stating "that no reasonable jury could find infringement" or "conclude that Cook's accused devices" literally infringed Edwards' patents. The court further reaffirmed the District Court's original decision "that Edwards cannot, as a matter of law, show that Cook's accused devices infringe the patents-in-suit under the doctrine of equivalents. Cook, therefore, is entitled to judgment in its favor on this basis as well."

In other legalities:

Illumina (San Diego) reported that it has been served with a complaint filed on September 21, 2009 in the U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Delaware naming Illumina as a defendant.

The complaint names as plaintiffs Life Technologies (Carlsbad, California); Applied Biosystems (Foster City, California); a Russian research institute; two individuals listed as inventors on the asserted patents; and another individual who appears to have an ownership interest in the patents. The complaint alleges among other things that Illumina's Genome Analyzer System infringes U.S. Patent Nos. 5,616,478; 5,958,698; and 6,001,568. These patents, which are directed to methods for DNA amplification, expire in 2012 and 2014.

Aerocrine (Solna, Sweden) reported the positive outcome of its complaint against Medisoft filed at the District Court of Dusseldorf, Germany.

In March 2008, Aerocrine sued the Belgian company Medisoft for patent infringement before the District Court of D sseldorf. The District Court said in its written decisions that the Medisoft device Hyp'Air FeNO infringes Aerocrine's patents EP 0 606 351 B1, EP 1 439 781 B1 and EP 0 724 723 B1. The judgments may be appealed by Medisoft and Medisoft has said it would file invalidity proceedings against Aerocrine's patents.

"We are pleased that the Dusseldorf District Court has confirmed our view that Medisoft is infringing several Aerocrine patents in Germany," said Paul de Potocki, CEO of Aerocrine AB. "Should Medisoft proceed to an invalidity process, we firmly believe that our patents are valid and that this will be confirmed by the German Federal Patents Court".