MiMedx Reaches Settlement With Medline Industries And Liventa Bioscience For Certain Claims
MARIETTA, Ga., June 21, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — MiMedx Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: MDXG), the leading regenerative medicine company utilizing human amniotic tissue and patent-protected processes to develop and market advanced products and therapies for the Wound Care, Surgical, Orthopedic, Spine, Sports Medicine, Ophthalmic, and Dental sectors of healthcare, announced today that the Company has agreed to terms of settlement with each of Medline Industries, Inc. (“Medline”) and Liventa Bioscience, Inc. (“Liventa”) for false advertising claims asserted against each of them by MiMedx.
In April 2014, MiMedx filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia against Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation, Inc. (“MTF”), Medline, and Liventa for permanent injunctive relief and unspecified damages. In its suit, MiMedx asserted, among other things, that Liventa (formerly known as AFCell Medical, Inc.) and Medline knowingly and willfully made false and misleading representations about their respective products to providers, patients and in some cases, prospective investors. In addition to the allegations of false advertising, the lawsuit also asserted that MTF, Liventa and Medline infringed several MiMedx patents.
The various false advertising claims asserted by MiMedx in its lawsuit included false advertising in violation of the Lanham Act; unfair competition in violation of the Lanham Act; false advertising in violation of the Georgia False Advertising Statue; and deceptive trade practices in violation of the Georgia Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
Parker H. “Pete” Petit, Chairman and CEO, said, “Though the terms of the agreement are confidential, we have reached an amicable settlement of the false advertising claims against each of these defendants for an undisclosed sum. We will now be able to focus our attention on the resolution of our patent-related claims against MTF, Medline and Liventa. We remain confident that we will have a very successful outcome for those aspects of our lawsuit.”
Bill Taylor, President and COO, stated, “Our progress to date in the patent infringement portion of this lawsuit gives us confidence that we will prevail on the merits. It is essential that we take whatever steps and legal measures that are available to protect our intellectual property. We have invested many millions in developing our intellectual property, and we refuse to let others compete unfairly by taking what is not theirs and using it and promoting it as their own product. We respect and enjoy fair competition, but unfair competition deserves an aggressive response.”
About MiMedx
MiMedx® is an integrated developer, processor and marketer of patent protected and proprietary regenerative biomaterial products and bioimplants processed from human amniotic membrane and other birth tissues and human skin and bone. “Innovations in Regenerative Biomaterials” is the framework behind our mission to give physicians products and tissues to help the body heal itself. Our biomaterial platform technologies are AmnioFix®, EpiFix®, OrthoFlo, Physio®, AlloBurn™, and CollaFix™. AmnioFix and EpiFix are our tissue technologies processed from human amniotic membrane derived from donated placentas. Elected in advance of delivery through our donor program, a mother delivering a healthy baby via scheduled full-term Caesarean section birth may donate the placenta in lieu of having it discarded as medical waste. We process the human amniotic membrane utilizing our proprietary PURION® Process, to produce a safe and effective implant. MiMedx is the leading supplier of amniotic tissue, having supplied over 600,000 allografts to date for application in the Wound Care, Burn, Surgical, Orthopedic, Spine, Sports Medicine, Ophthalmic and Dental sectors of healthcare. We recently introduced OrthoFlo, an amniotic fluid derived allograft for homologous use. Amniotic fluid is donated by a consenting mother delivering a full-term healthy baby by scheduled Caesarean section. Through the recent acquisition of Stability Biologics, our newest proprietary platforms include Physio, a unique bone grafting material comprised of 100% bone tissue with no added carrier, thus maximizing bone forming potential, a demineralized bone matrix (DBM) to complement our product portfolio offerings within the Orthopedic market and AlloBurn, a skin product for burns. CollaFix, our next technology platform we plan to commercialize, is our collagen fiber technology, developed with our patented cross-linking polymers, designed to mimic the natural composition, structure and mechanical properties of musculoskeletal tissues in order to augment their repair. CollaFix is the only biological, biodegradable, biomimetic technology that matches human tendon in strength and stiffness. The Company’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Stability Biologics, LLC, is accredited by the American Association of Tissue Banks (AATB) and registered with the FDA. The Company distinguishes its revenue in two primary regenerative medicine specialties of “Wound Care” and “SSO.” The Company defines SSO as surgical, sports medicine and orthopedics with spinal procedures included in orthopedics and abdominal, and lower pelvic procedures included in surgical.
Safe Harbor Statement
This press release includes statements that look forward in time or that express management’s beliefs, expectations or hopes. Such statements are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements include, but are not limited to that the Company remains confident it will have a successful outcome on the patent infringement aspects of the lawsuit at issue. Among the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements include that the outcome of litigation is never completely predictable, and as such, the Company may not ultimately prevail in litigation or on appeal or the Company may prevail in certain aspects but not others; even if the Company prevails in this suit, the Company must still continue to monitor potential infringers in order to protect its investment in the development of its intellectual property, and the risk factors detailed from time to time in the Company’s periodic Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including, without limitation, its 10-K filing for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015 and its most recent 10Q filing. By making these forward-looking statements, the Company does not undertake to update them in any manner except as may be required by the Company’s disclosure obligations in filings it makes with the Securities and Exchange Commission under the federal securities laws.
SOURCE MiMedx Group, Inc.
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