HCN to Withdraw Legal Action against Pro Medicus

Pro Medicus to claim costs

Health Communication Network Limited (HCN) announced late yesterday that it would discontinue proceedings relating to its claims that Pro Medicus Limited infringed copyright in HCN's Medical Director software. Pro Medicus will claim costs.

The claims related to Pro Medicus' recently acquired clinical desktop software, ProMed Clinical, which competes with Medical Director, the previously unchallenged leader in the Australian GP market.

Pro Medicus managing director, Dr Sam Hupert said, "It is unfortunate that we were forced to go through this process as we were always confident that there was no basis whatsoever to HCN's claim. Their decision to withdraw shortly after receiving our statement of defence vindicates this. On the positive side we regard their conduct as an endorsement of the serious competitive threat that ProMed Clinical poses in the GP desktop market."

"Doctors who have used ProMed Clinical have reported significant advantages, particularly with respect to speed, reliability and hardware requirements. We can now get on with aggressively marketing Pro Med Clinical to the doctors of Australia, including the 15,000 doctors on our promedicus.net e-health network. We believe in letting the doctors decide which product they prefer to use."

The Pro Medicus board reacted strongly to both the timing and the selective and misleading presentation of the ASX announcement entitled "Litigation Update" put out by HCN after the market closed last night.

Dr Hupert said, "We intend to finalise matters by also seeking costs in the related matter initiated by Pro Medicus seeking to restrain HCN from making unjustified threats of copyright infringement. This will put this matter to rest once and for all."

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