Life Sciences Firms Gear Up as Patent Litigation Campaigns Grow

Medical technology companies are facing the type of patent litigation once reserved for tech giants, and they’re responding with renewed legal muscle to counter adversaries they deride as “patent trolls.”

Litigation campaigns from non-practicing entities, which own patents but don’t sell products using them, have focused on tech companies. But as medical technologies increasingly rely on software, connectivity, and data, life-sciences legal teams are treating NPEs as a risk worth planning for.

“Med-tech often involves many components and features to target,” said Edward Reines, a partner at Jones Day. “Coupled with large revenues, that draws more NPE suits than products based on a single technology such as a chemical.”

Life-sciences companies include drugmakers, biotech firms, and medical technology providers. It’s the med-tech subset—companies selling devices, diagnostics, and digital health platforms—that’s increasingly in NPEs’ sights.

Nearly 60% of life-sciences legal departments now report having formal defense strategies against NPEs, according to a survey of senior in-house counsel by legal services company UnitedLex Corp. That reflects how preparedness is part of the sector’s intellectual-property playbook, even before lawsuits hit.

Cases targeting the medical sector since 2020 have accounted for about a tenth of lawsuits by NPEs—both patent-assertion entities that buy IP portfolios to fuel litigation and smaller companies or individuals that own patents but don’t make products—according to data from Unified Patents LLC, a group whose members are frequent NPE targets.

The raw number of medical-sector cases climbed along with the broader rise in NPE litigation. So far in 2025, 370 new NPE lawsuits targeted the sector, a pace projected to top the 512 filed in 2024 and 385 in 2022, Unified Patents’ data shows.

Shawn Ambwani, the group’s chief operating officer, said the adoption of standard connectivity features such as WiFi and Bluetooth in medical devices make them easier targets.

Litigation Campaigns

NPEs often pull life-sciences companies into sprawling suits with 10 or more defendants, typically alongside the technology firms they’ve historically targeted, according to an analysis of litigation data by patent risk-management firm RPX Corp. Bita Mortazavi, RPX’s vice president of patent analysis, expects the risk for life sciences companies to grow “due to the tech convergence.”

Med-tech sits squarely in the cross-hairs.

NPE Auto Injection Technologies LLC, using patents that once belonged to Sanofi, in April sued companies including Medtronic Plc, GSK Plc, and Bayer AG over drug-delivery devices. The company settled or dropped suits against Ypsomed AG and Novo Nordisk A/S, while others remain pending.

Since December, VDPP LLC filed at least eight federal lawsuits alleging infringement of patents related to advanced visual-display technologies and 3D-imaging systems. Recent targets include Abbott Laboratories Inc. and units of FujiFilm Holdings Corp., Medtronic, Siemens AG, Johnson & Johnson, and Konica Minolta Inc.

VDPP has since dropped all but one—a jury trial in VDPP’s case against GE Healthcare is set for April 2027.

These aren’t “one-off campaigns,” said Matthew Rizzolo,a Ropes & Gray partner. “These are NPEs trying to squeeze as much as they can out of their portfolios.”

Industry Response

Exposure is only increasing as the industry moves beyond chemical compounds and sells more medical devices. Unlike chemical formulas, which can be reliably searched in databases, “functional” patent claims describe what a technology does rather than its precise structure. That breadth can make it easier for NPEs to argue that a wide range of medical software and device features fall under their rights.

LeKeisha Suggs, a UnitedLex vice president, said organizations are beginning to treat NPE defense “as a strategic priority on the same level as with R&D investments.”

Companies are reshaping their strategies, creating layered defenses with portfolio audits, targeted invalidity searches, and strategic licensing.

The life-sciences industry is borrowing tactics long used in Silicon Valley. Jones Day’s Reines pointed to “pro-active monitoring of the IP space and common defense” groups as among the most effective approaches.

Others cite administrative challenges to questionable patents before they’re ever asserted. Some companies also buy up patents they fear could otherwise land in the hands of an NPE.

Groups such as the LOT Network, whose members pool patent rights to collectively defend against litigation, are drawing interest from life-sciences companies. It lists as members Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., Edwards Lifesciences Corp., Boston Scientific Corp., Becton Dickinson & Co., DexCom Inc., Illumina Inc., Stryker Corp., and Bayer’s IP arm.

Legislative proposals pending before Congress, however, could amplify the threat NPEs pose.

The RESTORE Patent Rights Act would make it easier for NPEs to win injunctions to halt allegedly infringing products, rather than being limited to damages. Life sciences companies are already watching the bill closely, worried it could give NPEs more leverage and slow innovation in digital health and medical technologies.

Money

The economics of these fights explains their persistence.

In-house attorneys say the math driving these cases is straightforward: it can be cheaper to pay a small settlement than fight an expensive case. Seemingly small settlements against hosts of companies can add up quickly.

RPX’s litigation-campaign data suggest NPEs are counting on precisely that approach, bundling multiple defendants into one case to increase the pressure for small, fast settlement payouts. Rizzolo said many defendants settle quickly when the patents don’t strike at the core of their business.

“A venture-backed biomedical company who gets sued over AI-based chat functionality in their customer service app or website may just want to quickly pay to put that case behind them,” he said.

“NPEs and trolls are always looking to assert their often invalid patents against as many companies as possible to increase their chances of maximizing” their return on investment, said Ambwani, Unified Patents’ COO.

As for the motivation for NPEs suing life-sciences targets, Rizzolo recalled “the apocryphal story about Willie Sutton: When asked why he robbed banks, he said, ‘Because that’s where the money is.’”