A Medical Device Daily

Wound care products developer Kinetic Concepts (KCI; San Antonio) is being sued by Innovative Therapies (Hunt Valley, Maryland), seeking invalidation of five patents held by KCI. Founded last year by former employees of KCI, Innovative is asking a Delaware federal court to declare that its new Svedman wound-therapy system doesn’t infringe KCI’s patents.

KCI specializes in development vacuum-assisted wound-closing products. Innovative, in its lawsuit, says that it is launching this week a competing system that is less expensive.

KCI said it doesn’t comment on litigation.

KCI lost a patent suit against BlueSky Medical last year when a federal jury in San Antonio decided KCI’s patents weren’t infringed. KCI sued rivals Smith & Nephew (London) and BlueSky in May in federal court in Texas over a new patent.

In other patent news: Third Wave Technologies (Madison, Wisconsin) reported that the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin has issued an order denying a motion by Digene (Gaithersburg, Maryland) for reconsideration of the court’s July Markman opinion. In doing so, the court reaffirmed its order, agreeing with Third Wave’s definitions for the disputed patent claim terms in the case.

Kevin Conroy, president/chief executive of Third Wave, said, “We believe that the court’s Markman ruling reinforces the narrowness of the patent claims being asserted and that Third Wave does not infringe. We look forward to proceeding on the merits at trial in February 2008 on Third Wave’s anti-trust claims against Digene.”

The court also reset the deadline for filing summary judgment motions to Oct. 19, 2007.

Third Wave develops in vitro diagnostic kits and analyte-specific, general purpose, and research use-only reagents for nucleic acid analysis.