Boston Scientific said today that it will pay Johnson & Johnson $1.7 billion (with a “b”!) to settle some longstanding patent disputes over stents.
One interesting way to put that number in context: J&J’s total sales of drug-eluting stents last year amounted to $919 million, according to this SEC filing. We haven’t seen full-year figures for Boston-Scientific, but the company reported $411 million in world-wide sales of drug-eluting stents in the third quarter.
The stent world has been working through lots of patent-infringement issues — Boston Scientific and J&J announced a separate, $716 million settlement last fall, and Medtronic last year agreed to pay Abbott $400 million to settle their patent battles.
Today’s settlement isn’t the end of it. As Dow Jones Newswires notes, litigation between the companies continues a lawsuit regarding Boston Scientific’s Promus-brand stents — the same stents that are sold by Abbott under the brand-name Xience.
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