A federal jury in Texas has ordered Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiary, Cordis Corp., to pay $482 million in a patent infringement case involving a former Princeton resident who invented a cardiac stent.
The case centered on Cordis’ Cypher stents, which release a drug aimed at keeping arteries from becoming blocked. Bruce Saffran, a radiology doctor affiliated with Philadelphia-area firm Digital Imaging Inc. and who once lived on Bertrand Drive, claimed the Cypher infringed on a patent he had obtained in 1997. According to the Times of Trenton, Saffran holds three patents for the technology.
According to a statement by Paul Taskier, an attorney from Dickstein Shapiro and Albritton, the Texas-based firm that represented Saffran, Johnson & Johnson has made more than $20 billion with this type of stent. The law firm also represented Saffran in his suit against Boston Scientific, which was ordered to pay him $432 million in 2008.
After an appeal, Saffran and Boston Scientific settled for $50 million.
A pending suit by Saffran against Abbot Laboratories, an international medical services firm that operates Abbott Point of Care at 400 College Road East and Pharmaceutical Products on Cedar Brook Drive in Cranbury, in 2009 is still in court. The amount of damages Saffran seeks from Abbott is unknown, but according to CNN, the suit claims that Abbott’s Xience stent infringes on Saffran’s patent.
Saffran, who specializes in diagnostic radiography, interventional radiology, and mammography, earned his M.D. from the University of Cincinnati. He lives and practices in the Philadelphia area.
#b#Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)#/b#, One Johnson & Johnson Plaza, New Brunswick 08903; 732-524-0400; fax, 732-214-0332. William C. Weldon, chairman & CEO. www.jnj.com.
