On September 1, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a $112 million win for Knobbe Martens client CardiAQ in its trade secret misappropriation case against former service provider Neovasc. A three-judge panel upheld the award in a unanimous decision, stating that a Massachusetts federal court acted properly to deny Neovasc’s request for a new trial.

On May 19, 2016, a federal jury awarded CardiAQ $70 million in damages, finding that Neovasc had breached both its nondisclosure agreement with CardiAQ and its duty of honest performance while assisting the company to design life-saving prosthetic mitral heart valves. Five months later, on October 31, the federal district court in Boston awarded CardiAQ an additional $21 million in enhanced damages, and granted co-inventorship of the Neovasc transcatheter mitral valve patent to CardiAQ co-founders Arshad Quadri, M.D., and J. Brent Ratz. Edwards Lifesciences, which acquired CardiAQ in 2015, is now co-owner of the Neovasc patent. With interest, the award climbed to almost $112 million.

“CardiAQ has worked tirelessly to reduce patients’ need for open-heart surgery with its transcatheter mitral valve replacement program, and Neovasc took advantage of its position as a service provider to misappropriate this unique technology for its own gain,” said Knobbe Martens partner John Sganga, who represented CardiAQ through both trial and appeal. “We are pleased that the U.S. Court of Appeals has upheld the substantial damages awarded to CardiAQ for this abuse of its life-saving services.”

CardiAQ hired Neovasc in 2009 to assist with valve assembly, but sued the company in 2014 after learning that Neovasc had developed its own competing program. In addition to Sganga, Knobbe Martens’ trial and appeal team included partners Christy Lea, Brian Horne and Josh Stowell.