Patent Law

An article appearing in today's (May 30, 2008) issue of Texas Lawyer by Nate Raymond of The American Lawyer states:

On May 28, a federal jury in the Eastern District of Texas gave a big win to Sam Baxter of Dallas-based McKool Smith, awarding his client, Medtronic, $250 million in a patent infringement case against Boston Scientific. Howrey represented Boston Scientific.

The suit, filed in March 2006, claimed that certain Boston Scientific balloon catheters and stents infringed four Medtronic patents. Howrey won a summary judgment of non-infringement on one of the patents and a pre-trial dismissal of Medtronic's claim of willful infringement. But the jury ruled Boston Scientific had infringed the remaining three patents and threw out Medtronic's invalidity argument.

Boston Scientific's loss comes despite a trend toward defense wins in the historically plaintiffs-friendly Eastern District of Texas. In 2007, defendants won seven out of nine trials. That trend seemed at first to be continuing this year ? a jury in January found Alcatel-Lucent hadn't infringed Dell patents. But since then, plaintiffs have been on the rebound. To date, defendants have lost five out of seven patent trials in East Texas, according to Marshall-based attorney Michael Smith of Siebman, Reynolds, Burg, Phillips & Smith, who maintains a blog tracking happenings in the federal courts there.

Read the full article here.