Dive Brief:
- Diabetes technology company Dexcom on Friday won complete dismissal of WaveForm Technologies' patent infringement lawsuit after a federal court entered judgment in its favor.
- WaveForm, a subsidiary of privately held AgaMatrix, had alleged Dexcom's continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) systems infringed its patents for implantable CGM sensors.
- The court dismissed WaveForm's lawsuit with prejudice, meaning WaveForm cannot refile the claims against Dexcom.
Dive Insight:
CGM allows people with diabetes to track glucose levels in real time. In 2016, WaveForm sued Dexcom in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, alleging Dexcom's CGM systems violated three of its patents on its CGM "indwelling" sensors that are at least partially inserted into a patient’s body before removal.
Specifically, WaveForm claimed certain earlier CGM systems and sensors sold by Dexcom, the G4 Platinum System and G5 Mobile CGM System, infringed multiple claims of at least three AgaMatrix patents.
But Judge Michael Mosman saw it differently and threw out WaveForm's patent infringement suit against Dexcom, finding the two patents WaveForm claimed Dexcom was infringing weren't valid in the first place.
"This case and outcome demonstrate Dexcom's commitment to defend itself against meritless infringement allegations," Dexcom senior vice president and general counsel Patrick Murphy said in an Aug. 23 statement.
The WaveForm CGM system was acquired in December 2016 from Bayer Healthcare and iSense CGM, according to AgaMatrix, which also markets glucose meters and related devices. The WaveForm system is not available for sale in the U.S.
Dexcom earlier defeated one of the three patents in a proceeding before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. "[T]he patents should never have been granted in the first place," Murphy said. The latest ruling ends WaveForm's patent infringement litigation against Dexcom.
If WaveForm had won the suit, Dexcom would likely have had to pay WaveForm damages or paid to license its technology. AgaMatrix did not respond to MedTech Dive's request for comment in time for publication.
Dexcom's currently marketed technology is the G6 CGM. The company aims to fully replace the G6 with the G7, developed with the help of Google's Verily unit, by the end of 2021. Company management projects up to $1.375 billion this year.
