On February 14, 2017, U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman of the United States District Court, District of Oregon granted a Joint Stipulated Motion for Dismissal with Prejudice submitted by Plaintiffs Smith & Nephew, Inc. and John O. Hayhurst, M.D. (inventor) and Defendant Arthrex, Inc. subject to the terms of a Settlement and License Agreement. Information about the settlement terms is not publicly available.
This agreement ends a 12-year long dispute between Smith & Nephew and Arthrex over Smith & Nephew’s U.S. Patent No. 5,601,557, which is directed to a method and apparatus for anchoring cartilage within a joint.
In 2004, Smith & Nephew sued Arthrex and alleged that certain products of Arthrex’s SutureTak® and PushLock® suture anchor families infringed the ‘557 patent (case number 3-04-cv-00029). According to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s opinion of March 18, 2015, the parties had gone through three jury trials and two previous appeals. The third jury trial in 2011 produced a verdict of willful infringement and damages awards. Arthrex moved for Judgment as a Matter of Law (JMOL) of noninfringement, which was granted by the district court without an opinion. The Federal Circuit reversed and remanded the JMOL and reinstated the verdict in its S&N II opinion in 2013.
We previously reported the district court’s entering of judgment in favor of Smith & Nephew on remand, awarding a total of $88 million in damages and granting a permanent injunction against Arthrex. The judgment was affirmed by the Federal Circuit in its March 18, 2015 opinion. In June 2015, Smith & Nephew reported receiving a $99 million patent infringement payment from Arthrex.
In 2008, Smith & Nephew also sued Arthrex and alleged that different products from the same SutureTak® and PushLock® families infringed the ‘557 patent (case number 3:08-cv-00714). Judge Mosman granted in-part Smith & Nephew’s motion for summary judgment of infringement and denied Arthrex’s motions for summary judgment as of non-infringement. He also granted Smith & Nephew’s motion for summary judgment as to reasonable royalty damages.
According to the court’s public record, a jury trial was set for February 13, 2017 for the remaining issues in the lawsuit filed in 2008. On February 10, 2017, Judge Mosman vacated the jury trial, followed by the parties’ Joint Stipulated Motion for Dismissal with Prejudice.
Smith & Nephew and Arthrex filed a similar Joint Stipulated Motion for Dismissal with Prejudice in the 3-04-cv-00029 case, and in another lawsuit in the Eastern District of Texas relating to Arthrex’s patents (case number 2:15-CV-1047). The motion was granted by the Eastern District of Texas court, but denied as moot in the 3-04-cv-00029 case, which was closed when the September 2013 judgment was entered.
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