Medtronic, a medical technology company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, recently announced that its loss to Edwards Lifesciences will cost the company an estimated $245 million in losses. Edwards Lifesciences is a cardiovascular device manufacturer based in Irvine, California. According to court documents, Medtronic’s CoreValve cardiovascular device infringes on patents used in Edwards Lifesciences’ Sapien transcatheter aortic heart implant.

Edwards Lifesciences’ patent complaint was upheld in a federal appeals court after a lower court ruled that Medtronic’s device infringed on Edwards Lifesciences’ intellectual property. According to the decision by the federal appeals panel, Medtronic will have to pay $73.5 million in damages.

Gary Ellis is the chief financial officer at Medtronics. In a recent conference call, he told investors that the lawsuit will cost the company an estimated $245 million. Since the patent dispute was upheld by the federal appeals court, the company fears an injunction will impact its ability to produce and market its CoreValve product line in the United States. In response to this potential threat, the company is in the process of moving its CoreValve manufacturing center to Mexico.

In the conference call, Gary Ellis stated, "We are making good progress in shifting our manufacturing, and most of it is already complete and we intend to complete that very, very shortly. So by and large, we think we'll get our volume outside the U.S. very shortly.” He continued, "At this stage, we're planning U.S. launch as driven by our clinical trials. And... we're planning the U.S. launch, and that is what we're planning for. And we don't expect this litigation to have any material impact on that."

References

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-20/medtronic-second-quarter-profit...