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Washington, D.C. - The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) affirmed Medtronic patents covering a sacral stimulation system on Thursday, after Federal Circuit judges last year ordered the board to reconsider the validity of the patents at the request of rival bladder and bowel control device maker, Axonics Inc.

In a pair of unanimous decisions, Administrative Patent Judge James Tartal wrote that Axonics Inc.'s new arguments to invalidate Medtronic Inc.'s two patents, following the Federal Circuit's remand, did not lead the board to a different conclusion.

Since 2019, Axonics, a California-based manufacturer of bladder implants, has been defending a patent lawsuit from Medtronic, which produces and markets bladder implants under the InterStim brand name. In January 2024, Boston Scientific acquired Axonics for $3.7 billion.

A trial between Medtronic and Axonics is set to begin in September before U.S. District Judge David Carter in a federal court in Orange County, California. Ahead of this, Axonics has been trying to argue before the patent board that two patents covering Medtronic's InterStim device should never have been issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, claiming that they were obvious to those in the bladder device industry.

These efforts largely failed at the board in 2021. However, Axonics convinced Federal Circuit judges last August that the PTAB denied the company a proper chance to reply to a proposed claim construction from its competitor, something that U.S. Circuit Judge Timothy Dyk warned could create opportunities for sandbagging.

Despite the remand, Axonics failed again at the board.

After reviewing the filings Axonics argued were improperly stricken from the record in 2021, the PTAB, with a largely unchanged panel, declined to alter its position. The exception was Administrative Patent Judge Brent Dougal, who replaced Administrative Patent Judge Alyssa Finamore after she recused herself from the case in September 2023, following the remand order from the Federal Circuit.

"The remainder of petitioner's arguments in its post remand brief are directed to accusations that patent owner's arguments are 'untimely and wrong,' 'incorrect,' and 'contradictory of the positions on infringement it has taken in district court,'" Judge Tartal wrote in the ruling entered Thursday. "Our decision, however, does not turn on any of the alleged patent owner arguments or district court positions that petitioner disputes."

Representatives of Medtronic and Axonics did not respond to requests for comment.

Administrative Patent Judges Eric Jeschke, James Tartal, and Brent Dougal sat on the panel for this decision.

The patents-at-issue are U.S. Patent Nos. 8,738,148 and 8,457,758.

Axonics is represented by Samantha A. Jameson, Matthew D. Powers, William P. Nelson, Azra Hadzimehmedovic, Aaron M. Nathan, and Danielle L. Pfifferling of Tensegrity Law Group LLP.

Medtronic is represented by Naveen Modi, Chetan R. Bansal, Quadeer Ahmed, and Paul Anderson of Paul Hastings LLP.

The cases are Axonics Modulation Technologies Inc. v. Medtronic Inc., case numbers IPR2020-00712 and IPR2020-00680, before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.