Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd. has had a lot on the line in its battle to bring a generic version of the popular antihistamine Allegra to the U.S. market. By last spring, the Hyderabad, India–based drug giant had already spent tens of millions of dollars to produce allergy relief tablets containing fexofenadine, the active ingredient in Allegra. But Dr. Reddy’s was facing fierce opposition from Allegra maker Sanofi-Aventis as well as Albany Medical Research, Inc., which owns the patents on the drug. In May 2010 a federal district court judge in Trenton found that there was sufficient evidence that Dr. Reddy’s had infringed a critical patent—and he issued a preliminary injunction blocking the company’s planned launch of its generic Allegra drug.
With a full trial on the key patent infringement claims fast-tracked for January 2011, Dr. Reddy’s and its outside attorneys at New York’s Cohen Pontani Lieberman & Pavane clearly had their work cut out for them. The question was, could Cohen Pontani, a tiny intellectual property boutique with just 27 lawyers, handle the job?
