Medical Device Company Infringes On Competitor's Intellectual Property

Case Overview

This case involves a patent infringement involving several varieties of medical devices. Senior management officials at the defendant company allegedly stole design information for a stent delivery system as well as a balloon catheter from a smaller medical device development company and attempted to secure a patent for the stolen technology. An expert with experience in the design, engineering, and testing of these medical device components was sought to discuss claim construction, noninfringement, and invalidity.

Questions to the Infectious Disease and Communicable Disease expert and their responses

Please describe your design, engineering, and testing experience with the devices and device components mentioned in the case summary.

I have spent my life developing minimally invasive surgical and interventional technologies, including catheters and stents. Over my career, I have been involved in a broad range of technology development efforts including stent fabrication. I have co-founded medical device companies which developed laser angioplasty catheters and endoscopes used in minimally invasive vascular surgery. I spent considerable effort developing testing protocols for stent and catheter flexibility. As a physician, I have performed angioplasty and stent placement procedures. While working as a consultant for a national surgical corporation, I helped develop stents for intravascular application. I served on a surgery and bioengineering study section for 16 years and served as chair of a cardiovascular and interventional devices study section for 4 years. Both of these study sections dealt extensively with stents, atherectomy catheters, and novel balloon systems for opening blocked vessels. I am a professor of bioengineering, electrical engineering, and surgery at a west coast university. I teach courses on design and application of minimally invasive surgical and interventional devices to engineering graduate students. I also serve as a member of a science advisory board on the subcommittee for the devices and radiologic health.

Please describe your experience assessing patent infringement.

I have served as an expert witness in more than 15 intellectual property matters, several of which dealt with some form of balloon stents and guide wires.

About the expert

This fellow of the American College of Surgeons has received his medical education and training from among the finest medical institutions in the nation, and is a professor of surgery at his current institution. He has authored an extensive body of medical literature on the topic of minimally invasive surgery, including the design and use of surgical tools to curtail the incidence of surgical errors such as that described in this case. He is a nationally recognized expert on minimally invasive surgical techniques. He also has significant experience in the biomedical device space. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers and a member of the Biomedical Engineering Society. He is the former Chair of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California. Currently, this expert is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering at a top medical school in addition to his professorship in Surgery.

E-000217

Specialties:

Infectious Disease and Communicable Disease

Medical Device Company Infringes On Competitor’s Intellectual Property