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Continued: Medtronic pushes stent plans forward
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Medtronic Inc. said Thursday it plans to start selling its Endeavor drug-coated stent and other angioplasty products in the United States with a popular stent-delivery system, a move that could improve Endeavor's domestic market share and Medtronic sales.
The move also catapults Medtronic into a fresh legal fracas with Abbott Laboratories, which holds the key patent for the "Rapid Exchange" delivery system that allows doctors to thread stents into heart arteries without help. Abbott has already filed a complaint seeking to stop Medtronic from using Rapid Exchange in the United States, and is seeking damages for patent infringement.
But Fridley-based Medtronic is pushing ahead on hopes that access to the system will boost sales.
"Medtronic anticipates that access to [Rapid Exchange] will increase usage of its angioplasty products in the United States," the company said in a statement.
Shares of Abbott and Medtronic traded higher Thursday amid an upswing in the broader market. Medtronic rose 2.5 percent to $39.44, while Abbott was up 0.7 percent to $54.56.
Two Medtronic bare-metal stents and an artery-expanding balloon catheter will also be launched with Rapid Exchange.
The system is the most commonly used stent-delivery tool in the United States, where sales of drug-coated stents topped $1.8 billion in 2007.
While Rapid Exchange is licensed to Boston Scientific Corp. and Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic is the one stent maker that cannot use the system in the home market, because of an injunction issued by a federal court more than eight years ago.
But Medtronic won a legal ruling from that court last week that said the injunction would officially end on Oct. 29, the same day the Rapid Exchange patent in question had been set to expire.
Abbott's complaint -- filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the same court that called off the prior injunction -- seeks a new injunction and unspecified "damages for infringement."
Medtronic spokesman Daniel Beach said the company does not believe Abbott's latest complaint adds anything to what was presented to the court during the last hearing, which came before Judge D. Lowell Jensen's order capping the old injunction.
"We are confident we will defend the complaint successfully," Beach said.
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