Stryker Drops Hip Lawsuit Against DePuy, Wright Medical, Zimmer and S&N

Stryker Corporation has dropped a patent infringement lawsuit against DePuy Orthopaedics, Wright Medical Technology, Inc., Zimmer Holdings, Inc. and Smith & Nephew, plc.

The 2011 lawsuit was over a patent for a hip implant component. Stryker accused its competitors of violating a Stryker patent for “Acetabular Cup Assembly With Selected Bearing, ” according to court documents reported by Mass Device on August 13, 2014.

The Stryker component, an acetabular cup “featuring a dual-locking mechanism and capable of accommodating a plurality of bearings with different characteristics, ” has allowed Stryker to achieve “significant commercial success, ” according to the lawsuits, filed in the U.S. District Court for New Jersey.

The suits against Smith & Nephew, Wright and Zimmer were consolidated with the DePuy complaint in May 2013, according to the documents.

In early June, a judge dismissed DePuy from the suit and vacated the portions of her ruling on claim construction dealing with a claim term, according to court documents, “which relate solely to the dispute between Stryker and DePuy and was not disputed by any of the other parties in this consolidated matter.”

Smith & Nephew, Wright and Zimmer then asked the judge to toss their cases. In a regulatory filing, Wright said it believes that its products don’t infringement patent based on the judge’s July 2013 claim construction.

“In filings with the court, Stryker has conceded that under the court’s claim construction rulings it can no longer pursue its infringement claims. Stryker has asked the court to dismiss the case so it may pursue an appeal, ” Wright said in the filing.