The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has upheld a $91 million trade secret award obtained last year by an Irvine, California-based designer of prosthetic heart valves.
CardiAQ Valve Technologies Inc. persuaded jurors that its partner in developing the valves, Neovasc Inc. of Vancouver, British Columbia, secretly developed its own competing valve design with know-how stolen from CardiAQ. U.S. District Judge Allison Dale Burroughs of Massachusetts enhanced the jurors’ $70 million award to $91 million and ordered that two CardiAQ inventors be added to Neovasc’s patent on the devices.
“We agree with the district court’s well-reasoned decisions and affirm,” Judge Richard Taranto wrote for a unanimous panel Friday in CardiAQ Valve Technologies v. Neovasc. Judges Pauline Newman and Kathleen O’Malley concurred.
