Dr. Shirin Towfigh thought she had developed a medical device that will revolutionize women's hernia care. Now Towfigh is suing Medtronic, a number one global medical device manufacturer accusing the corporate of stealing their patented design.
Towfigh, a Beverly Hills surgeon with greater than 22 years of experience, says she has found that a major variety of her hernia patients who’ve had complications after surgery are women – and that the majority mesh designs available on the market are aimed primarily on the male anatomy.
In 2016, it filed a world patent to guard a brand new design intended to enhance patient outcomes.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Delaware, the newest in a series of patent challenges against Medtronic, Towfigh accuses the medical device company of stealing her design after the parties met in 2015 and signed a mutual nondisclosure agreement. In 2016, Towfigh said she visited Medtronic's manufacturing site in France to debate a possible collaboration and their patent-pending product.
In May 2017, Medtronic filed its own hernia mesh patent for a product that Towfigh said closely resembles their design.
“I expected that a publicly traded company would take a more ethical approach and I have not experienced that.” Towfigh said in an interview with CNBC.
Towfigh is suing for unspecified damages.
A Medtronic spokesperson said in an announcement to CNBC that the corporate is reviewing Towfigh's criticism.
“Medtronic believes in its innovation and has a long-standing respect for the intellectual property rights of other innovators,” the spokesperson wrote.
Towfigh says she contacted Medtronic several times over the course of several years but made little progress. In a 2019 email exchange cited within the lawsuit, Towfigh raised concerns that Medtronic's latest network design “so closely” reflected its pending patent. An organization representative responded to Towfigh that Medtronic “is not taking the path that you described to us in your patent.”
Towfigh says after she continued to boost her concerns, Medtronic offered her a job as chief medical officer of the corporate's hernia division, which she turned down.
In 2020, a neighborhood Medtronic sales representative contacted them with a pre-market sample of the corporate's latest hernia mesh product. Towfigh described the product as nearly an identical to her own patent-pending design.
“I couldn’t speak,” Towfigh told CNBC. “I saw the actual product in my hands for the first time and just went pale.”
In October 2019, Towfigh's international patent was approved. In May 2020, Medtronic launched its latest hernia mesh product, Dextile.
The lawsuit isn’t the primary time Medtronic has faced allegations of patent infringement. In 2014, Dr. Mark Barry the corporate on the grounds that Medtronic had infringed two of his patents for correcting spinal problems. A federal judge found that Medtronic had “recklessly copied” Barry's technology and awarded him $23.5 million.
That same yr, Medtronic agreed to pay greater than $1 billion to settle a patent dispute with Edwards Lifesciences over allegations that Medtronic's CoreValve product infringed on its transcatheter heart valve patent.
Most recently, in 2020, Colibri Heart Valve sued Medtronic, saying the corporate's devices infringed on its patent related to heart valve substitute in patients with heart disease. Medtronic was ordered to pay $106.5 million.
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