Dr. Shirin Towfigh thought she had designed a medical device that would revolutionize hernia care for women. Now, Towfigh is suing Medtronic, a global leader in medical devices, accusing the company of stealing her patented design.
A Beverly Hills surgeon with over 22 years of experience, Towfigh says she discovered that a significant number of her hernia patients experiencing post-surgery complications were women — and that most mesh designs on the market were primarily tailored to the male anatomy.
In 2016, she filed for an international patent to protect a new design aimed at improving outcomes for patients.
In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Delaware on Tuesday, the latest in a series of patent challenges against Medtronic, Towfigh accuses the medical device company of stealing her design after the parties met in 2015 and signed a mutual non-disclosure agreement. In 2016, Towfigh says she visited Medtronic’s manufacturing site in France to discuss a potential collaboration and her patent-pending product.
In May 2017, Medtronic filed its own hernia mesh patent for a product that Towfigh says closely resembles her design.
“I expected a publicly traded company to have a more ethical approach about it, and that’s not what I experienced,” Towfigh said in an interview with CNBC.
Towfigh is suing for damages of an undetermined amount.
A spokesperson for Medtronic 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.
Towfigh says she followed up multiple times with Medtronic over the course of several years but made little progress. In a 2019 email exchange cited in the lawsuit, Towfigh expressed concern that Medtronic’s new mesh design “so exactly mirrored” her pending patent. A company representative responded to Towfigh saying Medtronic was “not going in the path of what you described to us in your patent.”
Towfigh says upon raising her concerns further, Medtronic offered her a job as chief medical officer of the company’s hernia division, which she declined.
In 2020, a local Medtronic sales representative approached her with a pre-market sample of the company’s new hernia mesh product. Towfigh described the product as nearly identical to her own patent-pending design.
“I couldn’t speak,” Towfigh told CNBC. “I saw the actual product in my hands for the very first time and I just went pale.”
In October 2019, Towfigh’s international patent was approved. In May 2020, Medtronic launched its new hernia mesh product, Dextile.
The lawsuit is not the first time Medtronic has faced allegations of patent infringement. In 2014, the company was sued by Dr. Mark Barry, alleging that Medtronic violated two of his patents intended to correct spinal issues. A federal judge found that Medtronic ”recklessly copied” Barry’s technology and awarded him $23.5 million.
The same year, Medtronic agreed to pay more than $1 billion to settle patent litigation with Edwards Lifesciences over allegations that Medtronic’s CoreValve product infringed on its transcatheter heart valve patent.
Most recently, in 2020, Colibri Heart Valve sued Medtronic, alleging the company’s devices violated its patent related to heart valve replacement for patients with cardiac conditions. Medtronic was ordered to pay $106.5 million.
— CNBC’s Scott Zamost and Agne Tolockaite contributed to this report.