Boston Scientific, St. Jude Medical settle some cases

Boston Scientific Corp. and St. Jude Medical Inc. said they settled four patent-infringement disputes over electronic heart and nervous-system devices. The companies also agreed to put limits on continuing litigation in two other cases over implantable defibrillators and cross-licensed an unspecified number of patents, both companies said. Neither side will have to pay royalties on the licenses. The settlements mostly involve Guidant Corp., which Natick-based Boston Scientific bought this year for $27.5 billion. (Bloomberg)

Amgen Inc. agreed to pay as much as $308 million to closely held Predix Pharmaceuticals for its experimental drug compounds. Shares of Epix Pharmaceuticals Inc., which is buying Predix, gained 13.9 percent. Amgen, the world's biggest biotechnology company, will pay $20 million up front and as much as $287.5 million later as marketing and development goals are met, Lexington-based Predix said. The agreement also includes potential royalties, the company said. Epix shares rose 59 cents to $4.87. (Bloomberg)

Fidelity Investments, the world's largest mutual-fund company, had $4.6 billion in investor withdrawals in June, the most among peers, data from Boston-based Financial Research Corp. show. Investors removed $1.1 billion from the Boston-based company's stock and bond funds in May. Industry redemptions were $2.7 billion, compared with net inflows of $5.3 billion in May. State Street Global Advisors, a unit of State Street Corp. in Boston, led sales in June as it pulled $5.9 billion into its exchange-traded funds, Financial Research said. (Bloomberg)

Insurance holding company Hanover Insurance Group Inc. of Worcester said second-quarter profit fell 29.3 percent, as last year's results included a tax benefit of $12.9 million. Net income dropped to $50.9 million, or 99 cents per share, from $72 million, or $1.34 per share, in the year-ago period. Income from continuing operations was $53.7 million, or $1.04 per share, versus $57.1 million, or $1.06 per share, the company said. Wall Street expected profit of $1.14 per share, according to an analysts' poll by Thomson Financial. (AP)

A federal judge in Boston ruled that Repligen Corp.'s lawsuit seeking royalties from ImClone Systems Inc. for its Erbitux cancer drug can proceed. Repligen shares rose 63 cents or 26.3 percent, to $3.03, the most in a year following the decision by US District Judge Richard G. Stearns. Stearns rejected ImClone's arguments that Waltham-based Repligen and MIT exhausted their patent rights by giving unrestricted licenses for the technology to the National Cancer Institute. MIT owns the patent for a cell line it claims was used to develop Erbitux. Repligen has an exclusive license to the patent. (Bloomberg)

The US Navy awarded a division of Raytheon Co., the nation's fifth-largest defense contractor, a contract worth more $95 million for torpedoes, engineering, and repair services. The contract, a modification to a previous award to Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems, is worth about $95.4 million for the consolidated MK48 and MK54 torpedoes. (AP)

THE NATION

Offshore tax havens hold trillions of dollars in assets and allow wealthy Americans to avoid paying $40 billion to $70 billion in taxes each year, a Senate panel said in a report being released today. The investigative subcommittee of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee came to that conclusion after delving into offshore tax evasion for more than a year. To address the problem, tax, securities, and money laundering laws should be changed to presume that a US citizen should be taxed on money in a trust or corporation in a country known to the Treasury Department to be a tax haven, said Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the investigative subcommittee. (AP)

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