The Federal Circuit on June 17, 2026 left in place a district court order allowing Stryker to launch its OptaBlate BVN device while litigation continues. In Boston Scientific Corp. v. Stryker Corporation, No. 2026-1171, a panel of Judges Dyk, Reyna, and Stark affirmed the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey's denial of a preliminary injunction that Boston Scientific Corp. and Relievant Medsystems, Inc. had sought to restrain the launch. The requested injunction rested on a theory that selling the device would induce infringement of claims 16 and 21 of U.S. Patent No. 12,303,166. The disposition is nonprecedential, and Judge Dyk wrote for the court.

The technology concerns chronic low back pain. The opinion explains that vertebral endplates sit between the bony vertebrae and the spinal discs, that damaged endplates can cause chronic pain, and that the basivertebral nerve transmits those pain signals. The '166 patent claims a method of using a radiofrequency probe to ablate the basivertebral nerve within a vertebral body, navigating a probe around the spinal column, through the dense cortical bone, and into the spongy cancellous interior while avoiding the spinal cord. Stryker sought FDA clearance using Boston Scientific's previously approved product as a predicate device, and Boston Scientific filed suit after Stryker announced clearance and plans to market.

At the heart of the appeal is a single claim word. Claim 16 requires inserting an introducer — which both parties agree refers to the described trocar — "through a pedicle of the vertebral body such that an opening at a distal tip of the introducer reaches a cancellous portion of the vertebral body." The district court construed "reaches" to require that the distal tip "touch[] or extend[] to" the cancellous bone, a reading both sides treated as requiring physical contact. Boston Scientific argued that the tip need only approach near, or create access to, the cancellous portion. The Federal Circuit reviewed the denial for abuse of discretion and emphasized the preliminary posture of the construction.

"Because we agree with the district court that there are substantial questions as to whether Stryker induced infringement of the asserted claims, we affirm."— Boston Scientific Corp. v. Stryker Corp., No. 2026-1171 (Fed. Cir. June 17, 2026), opinion

The claim-construction question the court declined to resolve

The standard for a preliminary injunction framed the analysis. The court recited that "[a] preliminary injunction is a 'drastic and extraordinary remedy that is not to be routinely granted,'" and that the moving party must show a likelihood of success on the merits, which in a patent case requires demonstrating no substantial question as to infringement of the asserted claims. The panel noted that the district court had not yet conducted a formal claim construction and declined to fix the ultimate construction itself, citing Jack Guttman v. Kopykake for the principle that the court will not "lightly intrude upon a district court's discretionary decision to issue only a tentative claim construction."

On the record presented, the opinion found the term "facially ambiguous." The parties, the court observed, "barely address[ed]" the construction below, identified no intrinsic evidence, and offered experts who did not suggest the term had any special meaning in the art. The opinion canvassed dictionary definitions showing that "reach" can mean "to succeed in touching" or, alternatively, "to come to, arrive at," or "to get up to or as far as," and concluded that, given the lack of a definitive definition, dictionaries were of limited help. Considering specification embodiments and a footnoted reference to the patent family's prosecution history — earlier patents in the family claimed inserting the introducer "into . . . cancellous bone" before the "reaches" limitation appeared — the panel held that Boston Scientific had not shown it was likely to prevail on its construction at the preliminary stage, and that the district court did not abuse its discretion in tentatively adopting Stryker's reading. The court noted a claim construction hearing was already scheduled.

Induced infringement under the district court's construction

The panel also found no error in the conclusion that, even under the district court's construction, Stryker had raised a substantial question of noninfringement. Induced infringement required evidence that Stryker instructed physicians to place the access cannula so that it touches the cancellous bone. The court walked through the evidence: training slides showing the cannula tip not clearly touching cancellous bone; inconclusive medical imaging; slide text stating the "[f]inal position should be just inside the vertebral body" that could refer to a stylet tip rather than the cannula; instructions to enter "just inside the vertebral body past posterior wall"; and an internal document describing the cannula as "placed within the cancellous bone" that, the court noted, was not shown to have been given to users. The opinion concluded that, considering the evidence "individually or collectively, there is a substantial question of infringement under the district court's construction."

Boston Scientific's doctrine-of-equivalents alternative fared no better. The court observed that the argument had been raised below "without elaboration in a footnote" citing a single expert paragraph, and that the district court did not abuse its discretion in treating it as forfeited, though it addressed the argument anyway. On the merits, the panel pointed to Stryker's competing evidence that the depth of the access cannula affects where the radiofrequency probe ends up, and that placing the cannula opening within the cancellous portion could move the probe out of the target ablation zone — testimony that, the court said, raised a substantial question of infringement on a "highly factual inquiry [that] rarely comes clear on a premature record."

Procedural posture and disposition

This was an interlocutory appeal from the District of New Jersey's denial of a preliminary injunction, with jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1292(c)(1) and 1295(a)(1), reviewed for abuse of discretion. The district court had denied the injunction on the ground that Boston Scientific failed to show a likelihood of success on the merits and that an injunction would not serve the public interest; the Federal Circuit affirmed on the likelihood-of-success ground, finding substantial questions on both claim construction and induced infringement and not reaching the remaining preliminary-injunction factors. The court also affirmed as to contributory infringement, which Boston Scientific did not separately brief. Costs were assessed to Stryker. Because the underlying claim construction remains to be decided on a fuller record, the affirmance addresses the preliminary record only, and the case returns to the district court, where a claim construction hearing was scheduled. Independent legal and trade coverage of the decision is collected in the sources below.