Founder & CEO buy adds $570k to Retractable Technologies stake

Retractable Technologies‘ (NYSE:RVP) founder & CEO, Thomas Shaw, bought 1 million shares of common stock in the company at 57¢ apiece, according to a regulatory filing.

The move comes just days after a federal appeals court ruled that Becton Dickinson & Co. (NYSE:BDX) owes nothing in a case brought by the Little Elm, Texas-based company.

That news sent RVP shares down -51.1% to a 64¢ close August 18.

The legal dispute has a lengthy history, dating back to 2001. After RTI and BD inked a $100 million to settle claims of patent infringement in 2004, RTI sued again just 3 years later over alleged patent infringement and anti-trust violations.

The anti-trust part of the proceedings were launched in 2010 and eventually, BD was found to have advertised false claims about its Integra, Safety-Lok, SafetyGlide and Eclipse safety syringes and about the amount of “waste space” in RTI’s VanishPoint syringe.

A jury later found for RTI, awarding the company $113.5 million and ruling that BD violated the Lanham Act’s false advertising proscription.

BD lost its initial bid to get the case thrown out, with an Eastern Texas court finding that infringement can constitute anti-competitive behavior.

In October, the court declined BD’s request to overturn the verdict and ordered the company in 2015 to pay more than $352.2 million in damages.

But in December last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit found that RTI’s claim that BD violated a section of the Sherman Antitrust Act was “infirm as a matter of law,” but upheld the false advertising claim. This sent the case back to the U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas to decide how much profit BD must hand over.

Judge Amos Mazzant ruled that BD’s notification of more than 750 distributors, 10,000 employees and major purchasing organizations about the claims’ inaccuracies was sufficient.

“The court, having made its findings of fact and conclusions of law, finds an award of disgorgement of profits would be inequitable. It is therefore ordered that defendant Becton, Dickinson & Co. shall not disgorge any profits to Retractable Technologies Inc. for its violation of the Lanham Act. The previously ordered injunctive relief adequately achieves equity between the parties,” Mazzant wrote.

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