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NuVasive Inc. (NSDQ:NUVA) this week won a round in its long-standing intellectual property feud with Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) when a federal judge in California found that a patent covering NuVasive’s Osteocel Plus bone matrix does not infringe Medtronic’s IP.
Medtronic’s Warsaw unit sued NuVasive in August 2012 in the U.S. District Court for Southern California, alleging that the OsteoCel Plus matrix infringes its ‘146 patent cover a “Surgical implant containing a resorbable radiopaque marker and method of locating such within a body.” 
The Feb. 17 ruling by Judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo hinged on a claim limitation for “uniform distribution or substantially uniform admixture to provide a [radioopaque] marker,” according to court documents. Bencivengo found that Warsaw’s reliance on NuVasive’s marketing materials for OsteoCel Plus wasn’t sufficient to show that it requires even mixing.