Suit Attacks Medical Supply Firm’s Patent : Litigation: Colorado company claims Birtcher Medical Systems stole its design ideas for device used to clot blood during surgery.

A medical supply manufacturer in Colorado has filed a lawsuit against Birtcher Medical Systems Inc. claiming the Irvine-based company copied its design ideas for a state-of-the-art device used to clot blood during surgery.

The patent infringement suit filed by Valleylab Inc. of Boulder, Colo., claims that Valleylab holds the rightful patent to Birtcher’s Argon Beam Coagulator, which emits a stream of ionized argon gas to stop bleeding while surgeons operate.

William E. Maya, Birtcher’s chief executive, was not available for comment Monday but said in a prepared statement that the suit “is without merit.”

Walter Williams, general counsel for Valleylab, said the company filed suit in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana last Thursday to settle a continuing debate within the industry over the relatively new device.

“We need to clear the air about the status of the patents,” Williams said. “It’s commercially difficult or commercially risky to enter a new marketplace where there is uncertainty about competing patent claims. We need to sort it all out.”

Valleylab, a subsidiary of Pfizer Inc., first developed the technology for the argon gas coagulator and patented it in 1976, Williams said. Valleylab’s device finally went into production in 1991.

The lawsuit claims that Birtcher’s device, introduced in 1987, infringes on Valleylab’s patent and seeks to have Birtcher’s patent invalidated.

The suit is not the first challenge to Birtcher’s gas coagulator.

Beacon Laboratories Inc., another manufacturer of an argon gas coagulator, recently lost a patent infringement suit filed against Birtcher in Colorado. The jury in that case found Birtcher’s 1987 patent valid and ordered Beacon to stop making and selling its competing gas coagulator.

Birtcher said the jury in the civil trial also considered Valleylab’s patent claims to the coagulator.

The new suit was filed as an “effort by Valleylab to use its substantial financial resources to distract and confuse the marketplace to its own competitive advantage,” Maya said in the statement.

“The successful conclusion of our lawsuit with Beacon, in which Valleylab’s patent was also examined in detail, should have put this issue to rest,” he said.

Valleylab, which said it would also ask for monetary damages if a jury finds in its favor, denied any economic motivation for filing the suit.