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Dr. Shirin Towfigh thought she had designed a medical device that would revolutionize hernia care in women. Now, Towfigh is suing medtronic, a global leader in medical devices, accusing the company of stealing its patented design.
Towfigh, a Beverly Hills surgeon with more than 22 years of experience, says she found that a significant number of her hernia patients experiencing postoperative complications were women, and that most mesh designs on the market were primarily tailored to women. male anatomy.
In 2016, it applied for an international patent to protect a new design aimed at improving patient outcomes.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Delaware, the latest in a series of patent challenges against Medtronic, Towfigh accuses the medical device company of stealing his design after the parties met. in 2015 and signed a mutual confidentiality agreement. In 2016, Towfigh says he visited Medtronic's manufacturing site in France to discuss a possible collaboration and its patent-pending product.
In May 2017, Medtronic filed its own hernia mesh patent for a product that Towfigh says closely resembles its design.
“I expected a publicly traded company to have a more ethical approach to this, and that's not what I experienced.” Towfigh said in an interview with CNBC.
Towfigh's patented mesh designs.
United States District Court in Delaware
Towfigh is suing for damages in an undetermined amount.
A Medtronic spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC that the company is reviewing Towfigh's complaint.
“Medtronic believes in its innovation and has a long history of respecting the intellectual property rights of other innovators,” the spokesperson wrote.
Towfigh says he followed up with Medtronic several times over several years, but made little progress. In a 2019 email exchange cited in the lawsuit, Towfigh expressed concern that Medtronic's new mesh design “exactly reflected” its pending patent. A company representative responded to Towfigh by saying that Medtronic was “not going down the path of what you described to us in your patent.”
Towfigh says that upon further raising her concerns, Medtronic offered her a job as medical director of the company's hernia division, but she turned it down.
In 2020, a local Medtronic sales representative approached her with a premarket sample of the company's new hernia mesh product. Towfigh described the product as almost identical to his own patent-pending design.
“I couldn't talk,” Towfigh told CNBC. “I saw the real product in my hands for the first time and I turned pale.”
The pre-market sample of Medtronic's hernia mesh product.
Source: US District Court in Delaware
In October 2019, one of Towfigh's patents was granted, according to the lawsuit. In May 2020, Medtronic launched its new hernia mesh product, Dextile.
The lawsuit is not the first time Medtronic has faced accusations of patent infringement. In 2014, Dr. Mark Barry sued the company, alleging that Medtronic infringed two of his patents intended to correct spinal problems. A federal judge found that Medtronic “recklessly copied” Barry's technology and awarded him $23.5 million.
The same year, Medtronic agreed to pay more than $1 billion to settle patent litigation with Edwards Lifesciences over allegations that Medtronic's CoreValve product infringed its transcatheter heart valve patent.
More recently, in 2020, Colibri Heart Valve sued Medtronic, alleging that the company's devices infringed its patent related to heart valve replacement for patients with heart conditions. Medtronic was ordered to pay $106.5 million.
— CNBC's Scott Zamost and Agne Tolockaite contributed to this report.
