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Dr. Shirin Towfigh believes the medical device she has designed will revolutionize female hernia care. Now, Towfigh is suing Medtronic, The global medical device leader accused the company of stealing her patented design.
Towfigh, a Beverly Hills surgeon with more than 22 years of experience, said she has found that a significant proportion of hernia patients who experience postoperative complications are women and that most mesh designs on the market are primarily based on male anatomy. The structure is tailor-made.
In 2016, she applied for an international patent to protect a new design aimed at improving patient outcomes.
Towfigh’s lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Delaware, is the latest in a series of patent challenges against Medtronic, accusing the medical device company of violating the law after the two sides met in 2015 and signed a mutual nondisclosure agreement. The company stole her design. Towfigh said she visited Medtronic’s manufacturing site in France in 2016 to discuss potential collaborations and the product she was patenting.
In May 2017, Medtronic filed for a hernia mesh patent for a product that Towfigh said was very similar to her design.
“I would expect a public company to take a more ethical approach to this, but that’s not been my experience,” Tofi said in an interview with CNBC.
Towfigh’s patented design (left) is side-by-side with Medtronic’s patented design (right).
U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware
Towfigh is suing for unspecified damages.
A Medtronic spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC that the company is reviewing Towfigh’s complaint.
“Medtronic believes in its innovation and has a long history of respecting the intellectual property rights of other innovators,” the spokesperson wrote.
Toffey said she made multiple follow-up visits to Medtronic over several years, but made little progress. In a 2019 email exchange cited in the lawsuit, Towfigh expressed concerns that Medtronic’s new mesh design “so accurately reflected” her pending patent. A company representative responded to Towfigh saying that Medtronic “is not acting in the manner you describe to us in the patent.”
Taufi said that after further raising her concerns, Medtronic offered her a position as chief medical officer of the company’s hernia division, but she declined.
In 2020, a local Medtronic sales representative provided her with pre-market samples of the company’s new hernia mesh product. Towfigh says the product is nearly identical to her own patent-pending design.
“I couldn’t speak,” Tofi told CNBC. “The first time I saw the actual product in my hands, I turned pale.”
Pre-market samples of Medtronic’s hernia mesh products.
Source: U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware
In October 2019, Towfigh’s international patent was approved. In May 2020, Medtronic launched a new hernia mesh product, Dextile.
The lawsuit is not the first time Medtronic has faced accusations of patent infringement. In 2014, the company was sued by Dr. Mark Barry, who accused Medtronic of infringing on two of his patents designed to correct spinal problems. A federal judge found that Medtronic had “recklessly copied” Barry’s technology and awarded him $23.5 million.
That same year, Medtronic agreed to pay more than $1 billion to settle a patent lawsuit with Edwards Lifesciences, alleging that Medtronic’s CoreValve product infringed on its transcatheter heart valve patents.
Most recently, in 2020, Colibri Heart Valve sued Medtronic, alleging that the company’s devices infringed on patents related to heart valve replacements for heart disease patients. Medtronic was ordered to pay $106.5 million.
—CNBC’s Scott Zamost and Agne Tolockaite contributed to this report.
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