Ahead of a planned acquisition by Medtronic, it’s not all smooth sailing for EOFlow.
The South Korean company makes a waterproof, disposable insulin patch pump that can hold up to 3.5 days’ worth of insulin and connects to a user’s smartphone for easy management of the pump’s basal and bolus insulin doses.
Sound familiar? Insulet certainly thinks so: Earlier this year, the insulin pump maker filed a lawsuit against EOFlow, claiming the latter’s patch pump was developed using stolen trade secrets. Insulet has now won the first battle in that patent war, as the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts this month issued a preliminary injunction that stops EOFLow from manufacturing or selling any products that were developed based on Insulet’s tech.
The order will stand until a trial on the merits of the case is complete, according to the injunction, which was handed down Friday. EOFlow did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Insulet—which also makes tubeless, three-day insulin patch pumps that can be controlled from a user’s smartphone—filed the original complaint in August.
In it, the company alleges that after EOFlow spent its first five years developing a patch pump with a unique design and internal pumping technology—“with no meaningful progress”—around 2016, it “pivoted and launched a plan to brazenly copy Insulet’s Omnipod System.”
According to Insulet, that included hiring some of its former senior executives and other “critical employees” as well as signing an agreement with Flex, the contract manufacturer also used by Insulet, which “possessed every detail of Insulet’s proprietary and confidential manufacturing processes through its own manufacturing agreement with Insulet.”
The result? The 2018 unveiling of EOFlow’s EOPatch device, which looks “strikingly similar” to the Omnipod pump both externally and internally, according to Insulet’s complaint, which noted of the devices’ internal mechanisms: “Many of the components are entirely interchangeable between the two products.”
Insulet’s accusations that the EOPatch device is built on the “wholesale theft of Insulet’s intellectual property” comes not long after EOFlow submitted the device for FDA 510(k) clearance, which requires proof only that a new device is substantially equivalent to another already cleared by the agency—“presumably, Insulet’s Ominpod,” per the complaint.
The complaint also came shortly after Medtronic announced plans to purchase EOFlow for a total of $738 million. According to that May announcement, pending necessary regulatory signoffs, the medtech giant plans to integrate the EOPatch insulin pump with its own continuous glucose monitors and meal-detection algorithm to create a closed-loop diabetes management system. At the time, Medtronic set a potential closing date in the second half of 2023.
Though Medtronic isn’t named as a defendant in the suit, Insulet did allege that if the acquisition closes, “Medtronic will effectively be outsourcing the theft of intellectual property to bring to market a patch pump that it has repeatedly tried and failed to develop on its own.”
The complaint added, “The disclosure of Insulet’s trade secrets to Medtronic—a competitor with virtually unlimited resources—will work immediate and irreparable harm to Insulet and effectively rob all value from Insulet’s trade secrets.”