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Dr. Shirin Towfigh thought she had developed a medical device that would revolutionize women's hernia care. Now Towfigh is suing Medtronic, a leading global medical device manufacturer accusing the company of stealing their patented design.
Towfigh, a Beverly Hills surgeon with more than 22 years of experience, says she has found that a significant number of her hernia patients who have had complications after surgery are women – and that most mesh designs on the market are aimed primarily at the male anatomy.
In 2016, it filed an international patent to protect a new design intended to improve 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 her design after the parties met in 2015 and signed a mutual nondisclosure agreement. In 2016, Towfigh said she visited Medtronic's manufacturing site in France to discuss a possible collaboration and their patent-pending product.
In May 2017, Medtronic filed its own hernia mesh patent for a product that Towfigh said closely resembles their design.
“I expected that a publicly traded company would take a more ethical approach and I have not experienced that.” Towfigh said in an interview with CNBC.
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Towfigh's patented net designs.
US District Court in Delaware
Towfigh is suing for unspecified damages.
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-standing respect for the intellectual property rights of other innovators,” the spokesperson wrote.
Towfigh says she contacted Medtronic several times over the course of several years but made little progress. In a 2019 email exchange cited in the lawsuit, Towfigh raised concerns that Medtronic's new network design “so closely” reflected its pending patent. A company representative responded to Towfigh that Medtronic “is not taking the path that you described to us in your patent.”
Towfigh says after she continued to raise her concerns, Medtronic offered her a job as chief medical officer of the company's hernia division, which she turned down.
In 2020, a local Medtronic sales representative contacted them with a pre-market sample of the company's new hernia mesh product. Towfigh described the product as nearly identical to her own patent-pending design.
“I couldn’t speak,” Towfigh told CNBC. “I saw the actual product in my hands for the first time and just went pale.”
The preliminary 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 allegations of patent infringement. In 2014, Dr. Mark Barry sued the company on the grounds that Medtronic had infringed two of his patents for correcting spinal problems. A federal judge found that Medtronic had “recklessly copied” Barry's technology and awarded him $23.5 million.
That same year, Medtronic agreed to pay more than $1 billion to settle a patent dispute with Edwards Lifesciences over allegations that Medtronic's CoreValve product infringed on its transcatheter heart valve patent.
Most recently, in 2020, Colibri Heart Valve sued Medtronic, saying the company's devices infringed on its patent related to heart valve replacement in patients with heart disease. Medtronic was ordered to pay $106.5 million.
— CNBC's Scott Zamost and Agne Tolockaite contributed to this report.
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