Utica company wins antitrust settlement

Utica company wins antitrust settlement

	Published : Thu, 05 Apr 2007 19:11 By : Agencies Print this Story

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) - A Utica medical technology company has agreed to drop an antitrust lawsuit against giant rival Johnson & Johnson in return for an $11 million settlement, a company official said Thursday.

Conmed Corp. sued New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson in federal court in 2003, claiming it could not sell its surgical instruments to hospitals that were being bullied into purchasing products from Johnson & Johnson.

Conmed accused Johnson & Johnson of illegally using its monopoly as a maker of sutures to force hospitals to buy its surgical products, resulting in higher prices to consumers and the exclusion of competition, the lawsuit said.

The company contended that Johnson & Johnson's tactics allowed it to unfairly corner 60 percent of the $1 billion market for endoscopy devices used by doctors in minimally invasive surgery, which involves small incisions.

At the time of the filing, Conmed's share of that market was less than 5 percent and would probably have been more than 20 percent were it not for Johnson & Johnson's anticompetitive tactics, the company said. In 2003, Conmed's endoscopy product sales totaled $37 million.

'We would like to think that our sales would have been significantly higher,' said Conmed's general counsel, Dan Jonas. 'But to the extent that the market is now open and we are free to compete on a level playing field, that's what we really wanted.'

Conmed had sought an injunction restraining Johnson & Johnson from continuing its anticompetitive practices.

Jonas said Johnson & Johnson has changed the marketing practices that gave rise to the lawsuit.

In a statement, Johnson & Johnson spokesman Jeffrey Leebaw said the $11 million agreement represented significantly less than the damages originally sought by Conmed. Leebaw said Johnson & Johnson 'expressly denies' the conduct claimed by Conmed.

The settlement was disclosed in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission report filed Thursday by Conmed. The settlement was reached Saturday.

After deducting legal expenses and other related costs, Conmed said it will record a pretax gain of $6.3 million to $6.8 million from the deal. Conmed has a global work force of 3,100 and reported sales of $646.8 million in 2006.

Johnson & Johnson, with $50.5 billion in sales last year, is the world's largest manufacturer of health care products serving the consumer, medical devices and diagnostics and pharmaceutical markets.