Billion-Dollar Infringement Trial Is Rarity in Eastern District of Texas: No Trolls!
By Nate Raymond
June 23, 2009
The patent infringement trial that started Monday in Marshall seems almost old-fashioned, with a pair of blue-chip manufacturing giants slugging it out over rights to an invaluable product. Johnson & Johnson's Centocor unit sued Abbott Laboratories, claiming that Abbott's blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis drug, Humira, infringes a patent held by New York University, which licensed the patent to Centocor and is a coplaintiff.Humira has generated revenue of $4.5 billion for Abbott, so the damages claim is pretty hefty. On Monday, Centocor counsel Dianne Elderkin of Woodcock Washburn told the jury that Abbott owes her client no less than $2.1 billion. "Centocor is not seeking to take Humira off the market; we just want to compete fair and square," Elderkin said, according to Bloomberg. "The bottom line is, if someone uses someone else's product, they should pay for it."
The Texas case is part of a larger fight between Abbott and J&J over the rheumatoid arthritis drug market. As we reported last month, Abbott has a patent infringement suit pending in Massachusetts federal district court against Centocor, claiming that a new Centocor rheumatoid arthritis drug violates Abbott's patents.
In Marshall, Abbott is represented by Bill Lee of Wilmer, Cutler, Hale, Pickering & Dorr, with assistance from local counsel David Beck of Houston's Beck Redden & Secrest. (In Massachusetts, Abbott has Denise DeFranco of Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner.) Abbott's summary judgment motion in Texas was denied by federal district court judge T. John Ward.
