A U.S. appeals court on Thursday overturned a $59 million verdict that medical device maker Insulet had won against South Korean rival EOFlow for allegedly stealing trade secrets related to its insulin pump technology.
The Washington-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned the decision after finding Insulet waited too long to file suit.
A federal jury in Massachusetts ruled in 2024 that EOFlow owed $452 million in damages for misappropriating Insulet’s trade secrets to create a competitor to Insulet’s Omnipod, a wearable insulin pump for diabetics. Last year, a Massachusetts judge reduced the award to $59.4 million.
Sales of Insulet’s flagship Omnipod product will reach $781.8 million by 2025, according to company reports.
Spokespeople for the companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday’s ruling.
Acton, Massachusetts-based Insulet sued EOFlow in 2023. The lawsuit alleges that EOFlow hired Insulet employees in 2017 and 2018 to develop EOPatch, an insulin device similar to the Omnipod.
After six years of failing to design its own patch pump, EOFlow began selling an EOPatch that was “strikingly similar” to the Omnipod less than two years later using confidential information from former Insulet employees, according to the lawsuit.
The Federal Circuit said the ruling could not stand under the three-year statute of limitations for federal trade secret claims. The court said Insulet should have known about the theft in 2019, four years before it sued EOFlow.
(Reporting by Blake Britton in Washington; Editing by Alexia Garamflavi and Bill Berkrot)
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