Jan. 14, 2005 Medinol US trial date set By URIEL HEILMAN NEW YORK A lawsuit between an Israeli stent maker and a US biotech giant is slated to go to trial June 20, with as much as $1.5 billion at stake. On Wednesday, a US federal judge set the date for the courtroom showdown between Jerusalem-based Medinol and Boston Scientific, a $35 billion publicly traded company. At issue is billions of dollars in revenue from the sale of Boston Scientific stents whose design Medinol says was stolen from a stent Medinol manufactured for the US company until a partnership between the two fell apart in early 2002. At Wednesday's hearing in lower Manhattan, Judge Alvin Hellerstein indicated that the trial would address how much-not whether-Boston Scientific needed to pay Medinol in royalties for the sale of the Express line of stents, whose unique design has made it the favorite among US physicians for unclogging blocked arteries. "It would be wrong, I think, for Boston Scientific to go free without obligation," Hellerstein said. At the same time, "It would be wrong for Medinol to say 'I'm entitled to every contract dollar.'" The announcement of a trial date may help speed the parties toward resolving the case outside of court. Urging the parties to come up with a solution on their own, the judge ordered attorneys representing the two sides to reconvene in two weeks to discuss appointing a mediator in the case. Several names were mentioned during Wednesday's court hearing, held at US district court in the Southern District of New York. Medinol says the success of Boston Scientific's drug-coated Taxus Express stent is thanks to Medinol's patented Nir stent. The US corporation broke the companies' agreement by constructing its own surreptitious stent-manufacturing facility and, later, illicitly copying the unique design of Medinol's Nir to manufacture the Express, say representatives of the Israeli firm. Boston Scientific disputes that and says it was Medinol that failed to live up to its side of the partnership. In a ruling in early December, the US judge found that while some of the companies' claims and counterclaims were without merit, the breach of contract dispute-the heart of Medinol's case against Boston Scientific-can proceed. Hellerstein explained Wednesday that if Medinol is responsible for breaching the contract-after the discovery of Boston Scientific's secret stent factory-then Boston Scientific may have been free of its contractual obligation to pay Medinol royalties for stents developed after that. "If, on the other hand, Medinol did not breach and wanted to live within the contract," Hellerstein continued, "the converse is true and huge amounts of damage could follow, in line with the amounts cited in newspapers"-likely a reference, one attorney later remarked, to Wednesday's Jerusalem Post story. That story cited the figure of $1.5 billion. The case in New York is part of a series of legal battles worldwide between the two companies. About a year ago, a Dutch court overturned a prior ruling favoring Medinol against Boston Scientific that would have barred the Boston company from selling its Express stents in the Netherlands and awarded hefty royalties to Medinol. On Wednesday, Hellerstein made clear he prefers the case to settle, even suggesting that the companies one day could resurrect their relationship. "Is it completely fruitless?" the judge asked lawyers representing the two sides. In setting the date for the bench trial-the dispute will be decided by the judge, not a jury-Hellerstein cited a planned Passover vacation as one reason for his lack of availability before late June.