On August 3, 2017, a Boston jury awarded Philips $10.4 million in damages for ZOLL’s infringement of three patents relating to automated external defibrillators. This represents only a fraction of the $200 in damages that Philips was seeking at trial. Philips originally sued its competitor, ZOLL, in 2010 for infringement of fifteen of its patents.
On July 26, 2017, after eight years of litigation and multiple appeals, a Texas federal court ordered ION Geophysical Corporation (“ION”) to pay WesternGeco L.L.C. (“WesternGeco”) approximately $21 million in damages and an additional $5 million in enhanced damages for willful patent infringement.
The Federal Circuit determined that Article III standing was not necessary for an appellee to participate in a judicial appeal of an IPR final written decision because the appellant had Article III standing in Personal Audio, LLC v. Electronic Frontier Foundation, Case No. 2016-1123 (Fed. Cir. August 7, 2017).
On August 2, 2017, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the use of Imbruvica® (ibrutinib) for the treatment of adult patients with chronic graft versus host disease (cGVHD) to Pharmacyclics LLC. Imbruvica® is the first FDA-approved therapy for the treatment of cGVHD.[1]
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a Notice on July 11, 2017, exempting 1,003 Class II medical devices from premarket notification requirements under Section 510(k). The Notice indicates that anyone with pending 510(k) submissions for devices that are now exempt “should withdraw their submissions.”
Hospira (owned by Pfizer) filed five IPR petitions against Genentech patents that Genentech asserted were directed to Herpceptin® (trastuzumab). The PTAB has now instituted IPRs in three of the five petitions and denied the other two.
On July 20, 2017, the Food and Drug Administration announced the clearance of “the first magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) device specifically for neonatal brain and head imaging in neonatal intensive care units (NICU)” to Aspect Imaging Ltd.
The STRONGER (Support Technology & Research for Our Nation’s Growth and Economic Resilience) Patents Act of 2017 was recently introduced in the Senate by a bipartisan group led by Senator…
On July 28, 2017, the PTAB issued a final written decision holding all claims unpatentable in an IPR after the Fed. Cir. vacated and remanded the PTAB’s previous final written decision. On remand, the PTAB reached the same patentability conclusion as it had previously, despite the Fed. Cir. reversing a critical component of the PTAB’s final written decision.
A recent survey conducted by ZingBox, a Silicon Valley internet security startup, found that more than 90% of healthcare IT networks have Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The survey further found that more than 70% of IT departments believe that current security systems for laptops and servers can also protect connected medical devices.
