St Jude Medical Awarded $2.3 Billion In Trade-Secrets Case

A California court jury awarded St. Jude Medical Inc. (STJ) a $2.3 billion verdict against a former employee and the company that he founded for stealing trade secrets.

The St. Paul, Minn., company said a jury in the Los Angeles Superior Court found former employee Yongning Zou stole trade secrets in order to set up a rival medical device company, Nervicon. The jury on April 22 awarded a total of $1.47 billion against Zou and an additional $868 million against Nervicon, according to St. Jude.

The award follows a preliminary injunction issued in November 2010 that prevented Zou and Nervicon from using or disclosing any of St. Jude's trade secrets as well as confidential or proprietary information, according to St. Jude.

"We take the protection of proprietary intellectual property and trade secret misappropriation very seriously, and we are pleased with the jury's findings," St. Jude said in a statement.

St. Jude declined to provide a copy of the verdict.

Attempts to reach Zou and Nervicon were unsuccessful.

The news comes less than a week after St. Jude's first-quarter results showed sales improved amid gains in all of the company's major medical-device product categories. The company, which gets most of its sales from pacemakers and defibrillators, also boosted its full-year earnings and sales guidance.

The news was earlier reported by the Star Tribune of Minneapolis.

St. Jude shares were recently up 0.5% at $51.96.

-By Steven Russolillo, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2180; steven.russolillo@dowjones.com

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