by Blake Britten
(Reuters) – Alcon Vision LLC will pay $199 million to Johnson & Johnson’s J&J Surgical Vision Inc to settle a legal battle over intellectual property related to the companies’ laser eye-surgery devices, Alcon said in a press release on Sunday.
Alcon said the one-time payment would resolve “various worldwide intellectual property disputes” and that the companies had reached a cross-licensing agreement.
Representatives for Johnson & Johnson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday on the settlement.
A copyright trial was set to begin in Delaware federal court this week over claims that Alcon stole software from J&J’s IFS laser systems, used for LASIK vision correction and other surgeries and used it in Alcon’s LensX system for the treatment of cataracts. A J&J expert argued that the company was entitled to at least $3.1 billion in damages.
The two companies also accused each other of patent infringement in claims that were blocked by a Delaware court.
New Brunswick, New Jersey-based J&J’s Catalys laser cataract surgery system competes with LenSx.
AMO Development LLC, which J&J acquired in 2017, sued Alcon in 2020 for allegedly stealing thousands of lines of its source code. It accused Alcon in a 2021 court of “theft and deception on a grand and shocking scale – the type typically found in paperback novels and Hollywood movies, real-life disputes between publicly traded companies.” No.”
J&J said that Alcon left “smoking guns” in its code that showed its plagiarism, such as typographical errors in J&J’s code and comments before LenSX development began.
US District Judge Colm Connolly said during a 2021 hearing that there was “overwhelming” evidence that Alcon knowingly copied J&J’s code.
Fort Worth, Texas-headquartered Alcon denied the allegations.
The case is AMO Development LLC v. Alcon Vision LLC, US District Court for the District of Delaware, No. 1:20-CV-00842.
(Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington)
