Breaking up isn’t so hard to do, after all. Just two years after spinning off its consumer products as Kenvue Inc., Johnson & Johnson aims to part ways with its orthopedics unit, which will take with it the Depuy Synthes name first created when Synthes Inc. married into the J&J Depuy ortho unit in 2012 for a tidy sum of $19.7 billion. Depuy was itself acquired in 1998.
Johnson & Johnson Medtech won out over a jury verdict that found the company’s Depuy Synthes liable for $20 million for infringing a patent claimed by Rasmussen Instruments LLC.
Johnson & Johnson subsumed five of its medical technology business under the Johnson & Johnson Medtech name. Ethicon, Depuy Synthes, Biosense Webster, Abiomed and Cerenovus no longer exist as independent entities, but J&J announced no changes in the product lineup.
The agenda for the U.S. FDA’s Sept. 8-9 advisory hearing includes a proposed down-classification of bone growth stimulator (BGS) devices to class II, but while the proposal met some resistance from an industry group, the panel sided with the FDA and declared BGS units ready for prime time as 510(k) devices.
