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Damages boost for Aircraft Medical
Aircraft Medical, the young Edinburgh-based company which is seeing off established rivals in a global market, has received a boost in defending a £37m damages claim against it in the Scottish courts.
Washington-based Verathon is claiming the damages for an alleged infringement on the European patent for its laryngoscope. It follows two actions launched by Verathon in the US, both of which have so far been unsuccessful.
The Scottish company, as The Herald reported earlier this week, has called the claims "spurious" and a business tactic, and said the US group's European patent does not even describe its own product.
It emerged yesterday that Verathon has now appealed against a ruling last October by the European Patent Office (EPO) which it claimed at the time had gone in its favour.
Verathon stressed in October that the EPO had "upheld its intellectual property right against a challenge by Scottish competitor Aircraft Medical". It said the patent protected Verathon's invention of its "innovative, clinically proven GlideScope video laryngoscope".
Aircraft Medical said yesterday: "Verathon has now appealed the EPO's October 2007 ruling. This appeal very effectively demonstrates that the EPO decision was in fact not favourable to Verathon." The EPO had in fact found the patent not valid as granted, although a narrower version of the patent had been upheld in a ruling which "severely weakened its patent", Aircraft said.
Matt McGrath, founder of Aircraft Medical and this month named Young Scot of the Year by the Institute of Contemporary Scotland, believes Aircraft may in its first year have already taken a one-third share of the US market with its highly-innovative portable video laryngoscope. Aircraft added: "In a re-examination request raised by Aircraft, the US Patent Office has so far declared that every claim in Verathon's (patent) is invalid."
