A Delaware chancery court decreed that Johnson & Johnson Inc. owes investors in Auris Health Inc. more than $1 billion over allegations that J&J had undercut Auris products after the 2019 acquisition of Auris. The outcome highlights the hazards of acquisitions of companies that are competitive in a particular product space, but a shift in FDA policy regarding robotic surgical systems may have also played a role in this outcome.
The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services posted a Sept. 6 statement regarding a cyber incident involving nearly 950,000 patient records held by a Medicare administrative contractor.
The FDA reported several class I recalls in the first week of September 2024, a list that includes products such as Medtronic plc’s McGrath line of laryngoscopes, some of which should be jettisoned.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit shot down Planmeca’s argument that expert testimony provided by Osseo was disqualified because the expert was not a PHOSITA at the time the patented articles were developed, leaving Planmeca with a negative verdict in excess of $2 million.
Litigation between companies in the med-tech space often revolves around patents, but the ongoing series of lawsuits between Philips Respironics Inc. and Soclean Inc. are directed toward the interaction between CPAP machines and CPAP cleaning systems.
The U.S. FDA is accused of dragging its feet on making public the devices for which it granted market access under the de novo program, and the agency recently been scrambling to bring these decision summaries to light.
The European Court of Justice declared that the European Commission was out of bounds in attempting to thwart Illumina Inc.’s proposed reacquisition of Grail Inc., which Illumina said relieves it of a fine of roughly €430 million (US$474.92 million).
The U.K. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence sees some evidence that single-step insertions of scaffolds for knees with damaged cartilage offer significant benefits, calling for the use of registries for tracking of outcomes data.
The U.S. Congress is examining legislative language to address what some believe is a deteriorating state of jurisprudence for injunction when infringement is found in patent litigation.
The U.S. FDA caught up with four makers of CPAP cleaning machines in the form of warning letters advising the manufacturers that the claims made for their systems fall under the definition of a regulated medical device. In two of these warning letters, the FDA said it had been in touch with the manufacturer for at least two years, indicating that the agency has been steadily working on enforcement activities in this space for some time.
