A federal judge said today he expects to grant preliminary injunctive relief to both sides in the fight between Henry Schein One and Vyne Dental, setting up a split order that would restrict each company in different ways. During the hearing, Judge Maddox said he anticipated granting relief that would bar National Electronic Attachment, Inc.’s Vyne Dental from marketing, selling or distributing software capable of write access to Dentrix databases, while also limiting Henry Schein One’s ability to interfere with software that only reads data.
The judge said the proposed order would also require Vyne Dental to deprecate any software or software functions capable of write access to Dentrix databases. At the same time, it would bar Henry Schein One, LLC from disabling Vyne Dental software or software functions that do not write back to Dentrix databases, and from denying printer-driver access to Vyne Dental’s customers’ electronic health information stored in Dentrix databases. In the hearing, Judge Maddox said, “I anticipate granting preliminary injunctive relief in favor of both parties,” and then spelled out the split he was considering.
The practical stakes are large. The print-driver protection is described as stopping the hemorrhaging of 7,000 practices and customer attrition, which is the kind of loss that can reshape a software channel quickly. In a market built around access to electronic health information, the difference between reading data and writing back to it is not a technical footnote. It is the line the court is now drawing with immediate effect in Vyne v. Henry Schein.
The case has been tracked as an information blocking development and compared with RTMS v. PCC, but today’s hearing was not about broad industry theory. It was about what each side can and cannot do while the court works through technical feasibility, a compliance period and bond. Henry Schein One already scored a CFAA win on the write-back behavior, while Vyne’s printer-driver method for reading data is protected. Those findings help explain why the judge appears prepared to split the injunction rather than hand either side a clean win.
What remains unresolved is the record the court still wants before it finishes the order. Henry Schein and Vyne have filed some, but not all, of the briefs on technical feasibility, compliance period and bond, and the rest of the relevant filings are sealed with no available redacted version. That leaves the judge with enough to signal the shape of relief, but not enough to close the file. The answer today is that both sides are likely to be restrained, and the court is trying to keep Dentrix access from being used as a weapon while the deeper dispute continues.
