One person can invent a medical device and this can result in billions of dollars of revenue. Medical device giants Medtronic and St. Jude know this to be true and the two seem perennially lock in battles to loot one another’s brain banks. Last summer, Minnesota Litigator covered an unsuccessful Medtronic effort. This past week, it was Medtronic’s turn to affirm its rights to the fruits of its organization and its stable of talent.
The issue in the unpublished Minnesota Court of Appeals decision (Klaphake, Halbrooks, Connolly, opinion authored by Halbrooks) was St. Jude’s assault on the legality of a particular Medtronic non-competition agreement.