Zimmer Snares $13.8 Million Patent Win Against Stryker

More than a decade ago, Stryker Corp.’s Howmedica Osteonics Corp. sued and accused then Zimmer Holdings, Inc. of infringing on several polymer-patents.

On May 15, 2018, a federal judge in New Jersey awarded Zimmer Biomet Holdings, Inc. $13.3 million in attorneys’ fees and another $500,000 in costs.

According to court documents reported by Law360, the award resulted in the invalidation of four of Howmedica’s patents.

In 2009, Zimmer asked that the polymer patent be re-examined. The appellate ruling supported a patent examiner’s findings.

Law360 reports that the patent was directed to a biomaterial widely used in hip and knee replacements. The examiner had rejected all the patent’s claims because they were either anticipated or obvious.

Claims “1 – 6 of the [patent] are inherently anticipated” the appeals court decided, and “claims 7 – 12 would have been obvious.”

The lawsuit goes back to February 2005, when Howmedica alleged that Zimmer infringed certain claims of the four related patents. The patents dealt with processes used to heat and irradiate polymers in medical implants.

In 2007 a New Jersey federal judge ruled that three of the patents were indefinite and therefore invalid. The Federal Circuit affirmed that decision in 2010.

In the meantime, Zimmer asked for an inter partes re-examination in 2009 of all claims in the fourth patent. The USPTO granted the request and a patent examiner eventually rejected each of the fourth patent’s claims.

The patents-in-suit included U.S. Patent Numbers 6,174,934; 6,372,814; 6,664,308; and 6,818,020.