Magnolia Medical Technologies has asserted four patents in a patent infringement action against Kurin, Inc., asking a Federal court to enforce and protect Magnolia’s intellectual property, according to a company press release. The legal action demands that Kurin stop infringing on Magnolia’s well-established patents, and respect the investments made by Magnolia to create, develop, and bring to market its groundbreaking and evidence-based technology platform that improves sepsis testing accuracy, said Magnolia, which invented and manufactured the Steripath technology solution clinically documented to reduce blood culture contamination and false-positive results for sepsis and decrease healthcare costs. “Kurin, Inc.’s making, using, and selling of its Kurin Lock product wrongly exploits Magnolia’s foundational technology,” the company stated.
On March 7, 2019, Magnolia amended its earlier Federal court complaint. Magnolia now alleges that Kurin, Inc. is infringing on four separate Magnolia patents: U.S. Patent No. 9,855,001, U.S Patent No. 10,028,689. U.S. Patent No. 10,039,483 and U.S. Patent No. 10,220,139. The four patents represent and cover years of Magnolia’s research and development work to decrease patient risk and reduce healthcare costs.
After watching first-hand as pathologists faced false-positive test results for bloodstream infections, including sepsis, Dr. Richard Patton filed his first patent application on Initial Specimen Diversion Technique (ISDTTM) in 2006, and co-founded Magnolia with Greg Bullington in 2008. The company says Magnolia invented and brought to market the novel and innovative Initial Specimen Diversion Device (ISDD) for blood culture collection and contamination reduction, now in its second generation called Steripath Gen2 ISDD.
Steripath — Magnolia’s preassembled vein-to-bottle, closed-sterile-system to collect blood cultures — reduces contamination and false-positive results by up to 92 percent with 12-month sustained contamination rates as low as 0.2 percent.2 This improvement in accuracy reduces patients’ risk of sepsis misdiagnosis and the associated unnecessary use of antibiotics, while reducing hospital length of stay. The company says Steripath has demonstrated this clinical improvement as well as reduced hospital costs in two controlled clinical studies and one cost-effectiveness study published in leading peer-reviewed medical journals, along with eight clinical abstracts presented at major national medical society conferences.
“Dr. Richard Patton and I have spent more than a decade developing unique medical innovations that deliver scientifically proven results, and we are committed to making sure Steripath and its future are appropriately protected, ensuring that patients and hospitals will benefit from Magnolia’s technology,” Greg Bullington, CEO of Magnolia Medical Technologies.
