Magnolia Wins Round One of False Advertising Suit against Rival Collection Device Maker

Case: Score one, maybe two, for Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc. in its ongoing litigation war with rival blood and bodily fluid collection device maker Kurin, Inc. In addition to patent infringement, the firms have accused each other of false advertising. Kurin began the suit by claiming Magnolia misrepresented the capabilities of its Steripath collection device; Magnolia countersued Kurin for falsely advertising its Kurin Lock device. On July 23, a Southern California US District Court handed Magnolia a double win, dismissing all of Kurin’s false advertising claims against Magnolia while allowing Magnolia to take its own claims against Kurin to trial. Significance: The court found that Magnolia’s claims about Steripath’s “virtually eliminating” blood culture contamination were appropriately supported by controlled clinical studies demonstrating that the device eliminates “all but less than 1% of false positives.” Corresponding claims about Steripath’s demonstrated 92% and 93% reductions in the contamination rate were also backed by clinical studies, the court said. By contrast, it held that the “blended rate” results that Kurin uses in advertising the Kurin Lock device are “the opposite of controlled study results, because the study does not control for the use of the relevant device.”