Federal Court of Appeals Upholds Antitrust Liability Verdict Against Tyco Healthcare
2009年11月2日 - 10:00PM
PRニュース・ワイアー (英語)
Affirms 2006 District Court ruling that found Tyco unlawfully
maintained monopoly power and utilized unlawful restraints of trade
and exclusionary dealing arrangements in the pulse oximetry market
IRVINE, Calif., Nov. 2 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Masimo
(NASDAQ:MASI), the inventor of Pulse CO-Oximetry(TM) and
Measure-Through Motion and Low Perfusion pulse oximetry, announced
today that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed the 2006
Federal District Court decision that Tyco Healthcare, now Covidien,
violated the antitrust laws through anticompetitive business
practices related to the sale of its Nellcor pulse oximetry
products. The 2006 decision found that Tyco had unlawfully
maintained monopoly power in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman
Act, and that Tyco's sole-source agreements and market-share based
compliance pricing contracts were unlawful restraints of trade in
violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act and unlawful exclusionary
dealing arrangements in violation of Section 3 of the Clayton Act.
The Ninth Circuit also held that above-cost bundling discounts when
combined with sole-source or market-share-based pricing can be
anticompetitive when such practices involve a significant portion
of the market. The suit was originally filed by Masimo in 2002. Joe
E. Kiani, Founder and CEO of Masimo, stated: "We hope that the
results that we have fought for will help improve patient care and
reduce the cost of care by improving caregivers' access to
cost-effective, innovative products. Medical products, from drugs
and implantable devices to pulse oximeters, should be judged on
their own merits and not based on artificial restraints on hospital
purchasing placed by large manufacturers. America is struggling
with rising health care costs. The best medicine for this challenge
is innovation and competition. Since Masimo began our travails in
the Senate and the courts to restore competition, American
hospitals and care givers have begun to have more choice. That
choice in pulse oximetry has not only caused pulse oximetry pricing
to decrease by over 30%, but many people's lives were either saved
or improved as a direct result of their access to Masimo pulse
oximeters. We hope this ruling will improve the accessibility of
all life-saving products for the best care at lowest price possible
for patients." About Masimo Masimo (NASDAQ:MASI) develops
innovative monitoring technologies that significantly improve
patient care--helping solve "unsolvable" problems. In 1995, the
company debuted Measure-Through Motion and Low-Perfusion pulse
oximetry, known as Masimo SET®, which virtually eliminated false
alarms and increased pulse oximetry's ability to detect
life-threatening events. More than 100 independent and objective
studies demonstrate Masimo SET provides the most reliable SpO2 and
pulse rate measurements even under the most challenging clinical
conditions, including patient motion and low peripheral perfusion.
In 2005, Masimo introduced Masimo Rainbow SET® Pulse
CO-Oximetry(TM), a breakthrough noninvasive blood constituent
monitoring platform that can measure many blood constituents that
previously required invasive procedures. Masimo Rainbow SET
continuously and noninvasively measures total hemoglobin
(SpHb(TM)), oxygen content (SpOC(TM)), carboxyhemoglobin (SpCO®),
methemoglobin (SpMet®), and PVI(TM), in addition to oxyhemoglobin
(SpO2), pulse rate (PR), and perfusion index (PI), allowing early
detection and treatment of potentially life-threatening conditions.
Founded in 1989, Masimo has the mission of "Improving Patient
Outcomes and Reducing Cost of Care by Taking Noninvasive Monitoring
to New Sites and Applications." Additional information about Masimo
and its products may be found at http://www.masimo.com/. Forward
Looking Statements This press release includes forward-looking
statements as defined in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933
and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, in
connection with the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of
1995. These forward-looking statements are based on current
expectations about future events affecting us and are subject to
risks and uncertainties, all of which are difficult to predict and
many of which are beyond our control and could cause our actual
results to differ materially and adversely from those expressed in
our forward-looking statements as a result of various risk factors,
including, but not limited to: risks related to our assumptions
regarding the repeatability of clinical results, risks related to
our belief that Masimo Rainbow SET and Masimo PVI provide unique
clinical advantages that facilitate earlier intervention and
prevention of adverse patient outcomes, risks related to our
assumptions that Masimo SpHb is an accurate, reliable and
acceptable clinical alternative to invasive blood tests for
hospitalized patients and healthy patients in outpatient settings,
and risks related to our assumptions that Masimo PVI is an
accurate, reliable and acceptable clinical alternative to invasive
methods of predicting fluid responsiveness, as well as other
factors discussed in the "Risk Factors" section of our most recent
reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"),
which may be obtained for free at the SEC's website at
http://www.sec.gov/. Although we believe that the expectations
reflected in our forward-looking statements are reasonable, we do
not know whether our expectations will prove correct. All
forward-looking statements included in this press release are
expressly qualified in their entirety by the foregoing cautionary
statements. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these
forward-looking statements, which speak only as of today's date. We
do not undertake any obligation to update, amend or clarify these
forward-looking statements or the "Risk Factors" contained in our
most recent reports filed with the SEC, whether as a result of new
information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required
under the applicable securities laws. Media Contacts: Mark de Raad
Masimo Corporation (949) 297-7041 Masimo, SET, Signal Extraction
Technology, Improving Outcomes and Reducing Cost of Care by Taking
Noninvasive Monitoring to New Sites and Applications, Rainbow,
SpHb, SpOC, SpCO, SpMet, PVI, Radical-7, Rad-87, Rad-57,Rad-9,
Rad-8, Rad-5,Pulse CO-Oximetry and Pulse CO-Oximeter are trademarks
or registered trademarks of Masimo Corporation. DATASOURCE: Masimo
CONTACT: Mark de Raad of Masimo Corporation, +1-949-297-7041, Web
Site: http://www.masimo.com/
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