Aerocrine announces positive outcome of its patent proceedings against Medisoft

Feb 25 2011

Aerocrine AB (STO:AEROB) today announced the positive outcome of its patent proceedings against Medisoft P.A.E. at the Court of Appeal of Dusseldorf and the Federal Patent Court of Munich.

In March 2008, Aerocrine sued the Belgian company Medisoft for patent infringement before the District Court of Düsseldorf. In September of 2009, the District Court announced its decisions that the Medisoft device Hyp'Air FeNO infringes the German counterparts of Aerocrine's patents EP 0 606 351 B1, EP 1 439 781 B1 and EP 0 724 723 B1. These European patents also cover Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, France, United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands and Sweden. The judgments were subsequently appealed by Medisoft and Medisoft also filed nullity proceedings against the three Aerocrine patents in Germany.

On February 1st 2011, the validity of Aerocrine's EP 0 724 723 B1 patent was examined at a hearing at the Federal Patent Court in Munich. The patent was upheld following a change of the infringed patent claim. An additional patent claim in the EP 0 724 723 B1 patent, that was removed from the original District Court procedure in 2009 pending a decision regarding the patentability of this claim, was upheld by the Federal Patent Court with a similar change of this claim. The nullity cases on the remaining two Aerocrine patents remain pending before the Munich Court.

Yesterday, following a hearing on January 27th 2011, the Court of Appeal in Dusseldorf confirmed the decisions by the District Court in 2009 that the Medisoft device Hyp'Air FeNO infringes Aerocrine's patents EP 0 606 351 B1 and EP 1 439 781 B1. The Court of Appeal will also revisit Medisoft's appeal of the infringement of Aerocrine's EP 0 724 723 B1 patent following the positive decision by the Federal Patent Court, as well as decide on Medisoft's alleged infringement of the additional claim in the same patent.