According to I-Flow, this patent covers intellectual property for the infusion apparatus used in the company’s flagship ON-Q Pain Relief System and is also used as the basis for other I-Flow brands and product lines. It is reported that ON-Q improves patient outcomes by continuously infusing a local anesthetic to the surgical site area or adjacent nerves following surgery. This lowers the need for narcotics, reduces length of stay and helps patients get back to normal faster.
I-Flow said that it has vigorously enforced its patent and trade secret rights for its ON-Q Pain Relief System against Apex Medical Technologies and its president, Mark McLaughlin, in the US District Court for the Southern District of California. I-Flow is also enforcing its patent rights against distributors of Apex’s Solace Pump, including Zone Medical.
In response to the litigation brought by I-Flow, the defendants asked the Patent Office to re-examine I-Flow’s patent. The Patent Office routinely grants such requests, and did so in response to the defendants’ request. After receiving submissions from both parties, the Patent Office reconfirmed the patent with clarifying amendments to some of the patent’s claims.
Donald Earhart, chairman, president and CEO of I-Flow, said: “We are extremely pleased with the Patent Office’s decision. We were confident that the Patent Office’s careful review of our infusion apparatus patent, used in our market-leading ON-Q Pain Relief System, would lead to its confirmation, and based on their notice of intent, that is exactly what happened here.”