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June 9, 2014 by Brad Perriello

A federal appeals court today upheld a win for W.L. Gore & Assoc.in a patent war with St. Jude Medical (NYSE:STJ) over heart defect repair technology.

AGA Medical sued Gore in 2010, months before St. Jude paid $1.03 billion to acquire AGA, accusing Gore of violating a patent with its Helex septal occluder. The device is an implant designed to treat a structural heart defects and competes with the Amplatzer device made by AGA/St. Jude.

In July 2013 Judge Joan Ericksen of the U.S. District Court for Minnesota dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that AGA failed to prove that the Helex device infringes the patent by using the court’s claim construction that the patent covers the “means for securing said device to a delivery system” – specifically, that an infringing device must include a clamp with a threaded bore, according to court documents.

“AGA has not directed the court to any evidence that raises a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the Helex septal occluder has either a clamp having a threaded bore or the equivalent of a clamp having a threaded bore,” Ericksen wrote.

Today a 3-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed, upholding without comment Ericksen’s ruling, according to court documents.

St. Paul-based St. Jude bought its Amplatzer technology, along with AGA Medical, for $1.03 billion in 2010.