(Reuters) — Alcon Vision LLC will pay Johnson & Johnson’s J&J Surgical Vision Inc. $199 million to settle legal disputes over intellectual property rights related to the companies’ eye laser equipment, Alcon said in a news 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 about the settlement.
A copyright lawsuit was set to begin this week in Delaware federal court over claims that Alcon stole software from J&J̵
7;s iFS Laser system, used for LASIK vision correction and other surgeries, and used it in Alcon’s LenSx system to treat cataracts. A J&J expert had argued that the company was entitled to at least $3.1 billion in damages.Both companies also accused each other of patent infringement in claims that had been stayed by the Delaware court.
New Brunswick, New Jersey-based J&J’s Catalys cataract laser surgery system competes with LenSx.
AMO Development LLC, which J&J acquired in 2017, sued Alcon in 2020 for stealing thousands of lines of its source code. It accused Alcon in a 2021 court filing of “theft and fraud on a large and shocking scale — the kind usually found in paperbacks and Hollywood movies, not actual disputes between publicly traded companies.”
J&J said Alcon left “smoking guns” in its code that showed its theft, such as typographical errors identical to those in J&J’s code and comments from before LenSx development started.
US District Judge Colm Connolly said during a hearing in 2021 that there was “overwhelming” evidence that Alcon deliberately copied J&J’s code.
Alcon, headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, had denied the allegations.
The case is AMO Development LLC v. Alcon Vision LLCUS District Court for the District of Delaware.
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