INDIANAPOLIS (Legal Newsline) – Medical device giant Medtronic has lost its appeal of a $112 million verdict in a lawsuit brought by a renowned spinal surgeon who sold his inventions to it.
The company failed to pay him according to two agreements, a jury found in 2018 after a 15-day trial. Medtronic’s appeal claimed six errors were made, but the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled against it on all counts on Dec. 4.
At issue is the payment of royalties to Dr. Rick Sasso for devices he invented under patents obtained by Medtronic for them.
“(T)he parties intended for the contract to last for either (1) seven years from the date of the first sale of a covered medical device or (2) for the life of the patent,” Judge Paul Mathias wrote.
“Because Medtronic eventually petitioned the USPTO to invalidate the operative claims of the ‘313 Patent, Medtronic asserts that it owed Sasso royalties for only seven years from the date of the first sale of a medical device incorporating his intellectual property. We disagree for several reasons.”
Medtronic reaches agreements with spinal surgeons to obtain patent rights to inventions in exchanges for royalties for the life of the patent. Sasso sold a screw delivery system and a posterior cervical fixation system called Vertex to the company.
The parties bickered over the language in the contracts, leading Sasso to file suit. His expert at trial convinced jurors he was owed 2.5% of net sales of the screw delivery system - $79.4 million. He also showed Sasso was owed nearly $33 million from sales of Vertex.