1.   Other stent makers are expected to follow, including Guidant, Boston Scientific and Santa Rosa-based Arterial Vascular Engineering.

2.   Sanjiv Arora of RBC Dain Rauscher Wessels, an investment banking firm in Minneapolis, favors Guidant, a smaller stent maker.

3.   The EndoVascular patent is potentially so valuable that some analysts think other stent makers, especially Boston Scientific or Medtronic, could wage a bidding war to acquire EndoVascular.

4.   Which brings us back to Arterial Vascular, the stent maker.