Patent Filings Roundup: MedTech Litigation Ticks Up; Medtronic Files IPRs; Lenovo Brings Long-Running Mobile Patent Fight to Board

District Court patent filings were down again this week with just 46—two thirds of usual output—and the continued absence of any new WSOU filings may point to some kind of strategy reset (or not;  it could just be a lull.). Board filings were at their usual pace with 32, though a huge portion of those were filed by BMW and Mercedes against Oso IP subsidiary Stragent, LLC or Medtronic (against Speyside Medical, LLC). This week saw another five denials under the Board’s discretion, mostly on cases already reported on.

Speyside Tigers: Roughly 10 months after being sued by Speyside Medical, LLC in the District of Delaware, medical device manufacturer Medtronic has filed seven IPRs on five patents related to unstented (i.e., floppy) transcatheter prosthetic heart valves—i.e., minimally invasive methods of implanting replacement heart valves.  [In full disclosure, the patents were issued by my old SPE and Art Unit when I was a patent examiner, though I did not work directly on any of the challenged patents]. The original assignee, Direct Flow Medical, LLC, appears to have gone under, and have been replaced by Speyside Medical, LLC.  Litigation powerhouse Quinn Emanuel brought the suit; little is known about Speyside other than they are well-funded and clearly committed to trial.

Early motion practice and a motion to dismiss for failure to plead certain grounds failed after Speyside filed an amended complaint, and the case is apparently steaming toward trial (eventually), though for Delaware and Judge Stark’s docket, it is still early.  This is shaping up to be one of the bigger medical device litigations in years.

The patents, U.S. 8,377,118, 9,445,897, 9,510,941, 9,603,708; and 10,449,040, are all directed to some form of the following device, which can be slipped into a patient’s aorta and expanded remotely. This, like the recent California suit over the Colibri, demonstrates the value of Medtronic’s FDA-approved “CoreValve” system (since 2014), which was itself the basis of Medtronic paying Edwards up to $750 million to settle related disputes.

That system, probably the most successful transcatheter aortic valve (TAV) on the market, allows for lower-risk aortic valve replacement with less invasive surgery. Little is known about Speyside Medical, other than they are of recent vintage and not related in any way to the Scotch whiskey.

Curiously, a cursory search of Speyside Medical, LLC’s Delaware Secretary of State filings show the entity converted its name in May of 2019 and no longer appears to be in good standing, though they haven’t updated the court with that information.  It appears that Speyside Medical is some kind of follow-on to Direct Flow, which appears to have failed, though it’s unclear if the suit is being underwritten by investors or where the capital for the campaign is coming from (or of it’s a pure contingency matter, which seems very possible).

Paying the Iron Price: Two Ironworks, LLC patents formerly owned by MobileMedia Ideas LLC have been challenged by Motorola Mobility LLC [now Lenovo]. The litigation list as interested parties a long list of players, including MPEG LA, Nokia, Sony, David Ruder, Global IP Law Group LLC, and Global’s partners David Berten, C. Graham Gerst, Ragnar Olson, and Steven Steger, as well as, apparently, Ximota Intellectual Asset Finance. There are 39 patents total that have been asserted across the ITC and District Court for years; all other major parties (Samsung, Apple, ZTE, BLU, AsusTek, Google, etc.) have apparently settled out over the past decade, but the mobile patents continue to have a little life left in them.

Image Source: Deposit Photos
Author: md3d
Image ID: 182092430