The injunction, issued by a U.S. District Court in
Delaware last week, would have taken effect on April 23.
Earlier court decisions found Medtronic's product infringed on the
Edwards valve.
Monday's ruling means the injunction would take effect only if the
appellate court determined it was properly issued, Medtronic said.
Medtronic is appealing the injunction with the Federal Circuit Court
of Appeals, which has agreed to an expedited appeal, requiring the
last appeal brief to be submitted by June 19.
"This stay of injunction should come as some relief to Medtronic
investors who were shocked when Edwards was granted a preliminary
injunction on CoreValve a week ago," Bernstein Research analyst
Derrick Sung wrote in a note to clients.
Investors and physicians had assumed that the benefit to patients'
health would have prevented an injunction from being issued, Sung
said.
Both companies' implants use a less-invasive procedure that spares
patients from undergoing traditional open-heart surgery for valve
replacement.
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Medtronic's CoreValve system for replacing diseased aortic heart
valves led to a significantly higher survival rate after one year
than open heart surgery in patients deemed at high risk of death
during surgery, according to data the company presented at a
conference in March. CoreValve won U.S. approval in January to treat patients
considered too frail for open heart surgery, becoming the first such
device to compete against Edwards' Sapien valve in the United
States.
(Reporting by Susan Kelly in Chicago)
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