Appeals court upholds BD win in Retractable Technologies case

A federal appeals court this week upheld a ruling that Becton Dickinson (NYSE:BDX) owes nothing more in a long-running false advertising claims case brought by Retractable Technologies (NYSE:RVP). The dispute dates back to 2001, when Little Elm, Texas-based RTI sued BD for patent infringement; that case settled for $100 million in 2004. RTI sued again barely three years later, alleging further patent infringement and anti-trust violations. That case was split, with the anti-trust portion stayed while the patent infringement claims were litigated; in July 2011 a federal appeals court decided that case. The anti-trust phase began in 2010; eventually BD was found to have made false claims about some of its safety syringes. In September 2013 a jury found for RTI, awarding $113.5 million after finding that BD violated the Lanham Act’s false advertising rules, the Eastern Texas court later trebled that amount, ordering the company to pony up more than $352.2 million in damages. In December 2016 the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the anti-trust ruling but upheld the false advertising claim, sending it back to the U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas for a decision on how much profit BD must disgorge. The Eastern Texas court found the following August that BD needn’t disgorge any more profits to RTI and that prior court rulings already gave adequate relief. RTI appealed that decision to the 5th Circuit, which in a split decision March 26 upheld the lower co...
Source: Mass Device - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Tags: Featured Legal News Wall Street Beat bectondickinson Retractable Technologies Inc. Source Type: news