John B. Sganga

Sganga led a Knobbe Martens team in successfully defending Nobel Biocare USA LLC, one of the world’s largest dental implant makers, against patent infringement claims by Spitz Technologies Corp. over Nobel’s best-selling NobelActive implant.

Spitz alleged to have invented “self-drilling” dental implants and had successfully enforced a related German patent against another competitor.

The case involved a battle between major players in the multimillion-dollar dental implant market.

Sganga attained a summary judgment victory just 10 months after the lawsuit was filed in Santa Ana federal court before U.S. District Judge James V. Selna.

“We had a pretty brisk schedule set by Judge Selna,” Sganga said. “He’s comfortable with patent cases.”

While some claim construction decisions can drag on lengthily after pretrial Markman hearings examine disputed terminology, Selna moved fast. “He entered his ruling in our favor just weeks after we argued for a narrow claim construction, requiring specific structure to enable the self-drilling feature,” Sganga said.

He then immediately filed for summary judgment of no infringement. “The other side had lost at Markman, and they didn’t have any alternative theories based on the claim construction the court had adopted,” Sganga said. “Many of the arguments of the patent owner [on summary judgment] were the same ones they had used already.”

Selna rejected Spitz Technologies’ attempts to revisit claim construction and granted summary judgment in Nobel Biocare’s favor in March, resolving all infringement disputes. Spitz Technologies Corp. v. Nobel Biocare USA LLC, 17-CV00660 (C.D. Cal., filed April 12, 2017).

“We wanted to make sure the court understood the technology, and Judge Selna was open to having a tech tutorial in an off-the-record session on a Saturday,” Sganga said. “We had the advantage of having worked for Nobel Biocare for 20 years, and we knew the material well.”

The next step was to narrow the issues. “The patent owner brought on the co-inventor,” he said. “We were able to put the Patent and Trademark Office proceedings in context, so much of the narrowing came through the file history. We could show their invention was very focused on several features our product doesn’t have.”

He added that the case moved quickly because the Knobbe Martens team had arrived at their strategy early and stuck to it. “We’d laid the issues out clearly in our answer to their complaint,” he said. “From the get-go, we outflanked them. Now we will be seeking substantial fees.”

— John Roemer