Minerva Patent Suit With Hologic on Surgical Products Is Tossed

A federal judge in Delaware ruled that a Minerva patent asserted against rival Hologic and related to a device used to treat abnormal uterine bleeding shouldn’t have been issued.

• Minerva displayed a prototype of the device at a 2009 trade show, making it ineligible for patent protection under a “public use” law, U.S. District Judge Joseph Bataillon said in opinion issued Friday in federal court in Wilmington, Delaware
• “No reasonable juror could find that the prototype exhibited at the trade show was something other than the invention that Minerva later attempted to patent,” Bataillon said
  • “Minerva commercially exploited its invention ...