Fifth Circuit Hears Allegations of Piracy in Medical Technology
Fifth Circuit Hears Allegations of Piracy in Medical Technology
Publish Date: 2026-06-08 19:35:00
Source Domain: natlawreview.com
In April 2026, a complaint alleging “one of the most egregious examples of piracy in the medical technology industry” landed on the docket of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.
The 180-page patent infringement lawsuit by Heartflow, Inc.—a California-based medical company that advances coronary care through artificial intelligence (AI)-powered three-dimensional models of a patient’s heart—alleges that a former Heartflow consultant founded a rival company, Cleerly, Inc., using Heartflow’s “revolutionary cardiovascular diagnostic technology, trade secrets, and confidential business information” while still bound by contractual obligations.
“By this action, Heartflow seeks to protect the extraordinary investment—measured in hundreds of millions of dollars, decades of research protected by hundreds of patents, and the contributions of countless scientists, engineers, and physicians—that created the world’s first AI-powered, non-invasive cardiac diagnostic platform, as recognized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS),” the Heartflow complaint states.
Cleerly issued a statement on April 17, calling the filing a “lawsuit to limit competition.”
“We strongly disagree with the allegations and will vigorously defend against these baseless claims,” Cleerly wrote. The company’s answer is due July 8, 2026.
We discuss this patent infringement case in further detail below.
Background
According to the complaint, Heartflow’s history reaches back to 1978, when a future co-founder of the company, then a teenager, suffered a ruptured appendix and resolved to become a doctor. By the 1990s, Dr. Charles Taylor’s research interests expanded to include using computers to simulate blood flow in arteries and medical image analysis.
In 2010, Heartflow’s leaders hired Dr. James K. Min, who signed a nondisclosure agreement and who agreed to assign to Heartflow…
