A Medical Device Daily
CryoCath Technologies (Montreal), a company that develops cardiac arrhythmia products to treat cardiovascular disease, said yesterday it filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Cryocor (San Diego) in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware.
The complaint charges CryoCor with infringement of several of CryoCath’s United States patents related to console systems. CryoCath seeks injunctive relief from CryoCor.
In response to the lawsuit, Ed Brennan, PhD, president/CEO of CryoCor, said that, “we are confident in the strength of our own patent portfolio and believe this lawsuit is without merit. We intend to vigorously defend the company against the allegations levied by CryoCath.”
CryoCor makes and sells cryosurgical consoles, catheters and related hardware and software, including its Cardiac Cryoablation System.
In other patent news:
• Alma Lasers (Buffalo Grove, Illinois), which is behind the development and commercialization of aesthetic laser, light-based, and radio frequency systems, filed a response last week denying all Lumenis’ (Santa Clara, California) patent infringement claims.
Previously, Lumenis tried to enforce two of the same patents it is now asserting against Alma in a lawsuit against another company and failed. With respect to those two patents, a federal district judge denied Lumenis’ motion for preliminary injunction, and questioned the validity of a Lumenis asserted claim in a published opinion. Lumenis ultimately settled that case before trial.
Lumenis is focused on developing medical and aesthetic lasers and light-based technology.
• Misonix (Farmingdale, New York) a developer of ultrasonic medical device technology for the treatment of cancer and other chronic health conditions said that its Sonora Medical Systems subsidiary was awarded U.S. Patent No. 7,278,289.
The patent awarded to Sonora, a supplier of aftermarket products, services and test equipment to the medical imaging ultrasound and MRI markets, is the first for its FirstAssist ultrasound system testing device and pertains to the methods and apparatus for testing a diagnostic ultrasound system having multiple transmitter elements and multiple receiver elements. FirstAssist was designed and developed for the purposes of testing the accuracy and ensuring the clinical efficacy of medical ultrasound imaging devices.
FirstAssist tests the various performance characteristics of the ultrasound system’s B-mode, Doppler, and Color Flow modalities. The device directly interrogates diagnostic ultrasound systems by injecting signals of various amplitudes, phases and frequencies through a computer controlled probe simulator interface connected to the ultrasound system’s probe port. FirstAssist is used by biomedical engineers and medical imaging physicists to establish a baseline of performance for any given system from a multitude of manufacturers as part of acceptance testing, as an integral part of an ongoing hospital-based ultrasound EBQA program, and for system troubleshooting.