Medtronic Corevalve, LLC v. Edwards Lifesciences Corp.

Medtronic sued Edwards for infringement of six claims of it 281 patent, entitled “Prosthetic Valve for Transluminal Delivery,” issued in 2011. Filed on January 5, 2009, the 281 patent descends from U.S., international, and French patent applications. On its face, it claims priority to French Application No. 99/14462 filed on November 17, 1999. That application is not relevant to the claims asserted against Edwards, so the pertinent priority chain has its genesis in a French application filed on October 31, 2000. During litigation, Edwards became aware that the 281 patent’s priority chain suffered from several defects for failure to comply with 35 U.S.C. 119 and 120. Edwards moved for partial summary judgment that these defects limited the priority date of the asserted claims to no earlier than April 10, 2003, the date on which U.S. Patent Application Serial 4 was filed. The district court granted the motion. The Federal Circuit affirmed. Because Medtronic failed to specifically reference each earlier-filed application in intervening applications in the chain of priority for the patent, the district court was correct to limit the priority date of the patent to no earlier than April 10, 2003 and find the asserted claims invalid as anticipated. View "Medtronic Corevalve, LLC v. Edwards Lifesciences Corp." on Justia Law