Boston Scientific will pay $750 million (€617.4 million) to a medical device supplier after admitting that it copied the company's products at a secret manufacturing plant in Dublin.

The Massachusetts-based firm, which employs 3,000 people in Ireland, has settled a court battle in New York with Israeli stent supplier Medinol.

Boston Scientific agreed to return its 22 per cent stake in Medinol's ownership.

Both sides agreed that further disputes would be resolved through arbitration.

The settlement follows a trial that began last June in which the court heard that Boston Scientific had set up a secret plant in Sandyford Industrial Estate where it disassembled Medinol's stent manufacturing machine.

Experts hired by Boston Scientific then assembled their own copy-cat machine, which was sent to Boston Scientific's main Irish headquarters in Galway. The entire scheme was codenamed "Project Independence".

A memo obtained by The Irish Times before the trial showed that Boston Scientific's chief executive, Jim Tobin, told the company's board that the scheme was uncovered by an unrelated US government investigation that "tripped over" documents at the Galway plant.

The company later said it was forced to act because of Medinol's erratic supply of stents.

The case has been in suspension since mid-August, when the judge urged both sides to reach a settlement on Medinol's $4.5 billion claim.

Under the terms of the agreement, both sides will end lawsuits in Europe and Israel.

The settlement is unlikely to have a major impact on Boston Scientific, despite a recent warning that third-quarter sales of its highly profitable Taxus stent were slower than expected.

The company had sales of $3.23 billion in the first six months of this year, with an operating profit of $839 million.

Boston Scientific began working with Medinol in 1995 and began to secretly copy its machinery in 1997.

Medinol had claimed that Taxus, which was introduced to the American market just 18 months ago, and Boston Scientific's bare metal Express stent were based on designs copied from Medinol.