Let’s start this week with a very close runner-up for Litigator of the Week this week.
Weil, Gotshal & Manges partners Ed Reines and Derek Walter, who scored LOTW honors back in 2016 for securing a rare preliminary injunction for Illumina shutting down a competitor’s infringing DNA sequencer product, got a pair of Federal Circuit wins Monday—one for Illumina and another for Bio-Rad in a separate case. In the Illumina case, the Federal Circuit rejected an en banc bid to take up a panel ruling the Weil pair got overturning a summary judgment decision invalidating patents protecting technology for Down’s Syndrome testing. For Bio-Rad, the pair scored a panel ruling upholding a $24 million damages award and permanent injunction tied to a November 2018 jury trial win in the company’s dispute with 10X Genomics over patents for technology that allows thousands of tiny droplets to serve as test tubes for chemical reactions involving genetic material. Scott Graham, my colleague who is on top of all things IP-related, says that the Federal Circuit has been “a killing field” for damages awards of late, so getting that number to stand up on appeal is certainly an impressive result.
