Fed. Circ. upholds Hill-Rom patent’s invalidity

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit today upheld a previous ruling by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board which found Hill-Rom Holdings (NYSE:HRC) patent for hospital bed monitoring systems invalid.

The Court of Appeals affirmed the Board’s previous decision, which found the patent owned by Hill-Rom to be invalid for reasons of obviousness.

“Following the reexamination proceeding, the examiner rejected various claims of the ’511 patent. The examiner rejected each of the claims as obvious in view of certain combinations of prior art references. Two of the examiner’s rejections are at issue on this appeal—the combination of PCT Application No. WO 94/27544 (“Travis”) and U.S. Patent No. 5,596,437 (“Heins”); and the combination of Heins and a 1993 manual published by the Hill-Rom Company, Inc. (“the Hill-Rom Manual”). The Patent Trial and Appeal Board affirmed both of those rejections,” Circuit Judge Bryson wrote in an opinion on the ruling.

The decision is the most recent in a continuing spat between Hill-Rom and Stryker (NYSE:SYK) over patents related to hospital beds.

Last December, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up an appeal by Styker in its patent infringement lawsuit against Hill-Rom.

A federal appeals court in June last year overturned Stryker’s win in a lower court decision, ruling that the district court misconstrued the claim construction in a patent infringement lawsuit over hospital bed monitoring systems.

The Supremes declined to review the June decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Hill-Rom sued Stryker in the U.S. District Court for Southern Indiana in April 2011, alleging infringement of 3 patents covering remote bed-monitoring systems. That court found for Stryker, ruling that the term “datalink” means “a cable connected to the bed that carries data,” according to court documents; Hill-Rom argued that the term could also include wireless communication.

A 3-judge Federal Circuit panel split over Hill-Rom’s appeal, with 2 of the judges siding with Hill-Rom and the 3rd with Stryker. The Federal Circuit reversed the ruling and sent the case back to the Indiana court.

In 2012, Hill-Rom settled 1 of 2 patent spats with Stryker over 10 patents covering motorized hospital bed wheels, with Stryker forking over nearly $3.8 million to put the case to rest, according to regulatory filings.

Batesville, Indiana-based Hill-Rom said it accrued $3.6 million from the settlement, net of legal expenses. Both companies said the outcome of the 2nd case has yet to be determined, according to the filings.

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