Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr landed back-to-back wins in the U.S. Supreme Court, highlighting a big year for the firm’s intellectual property practice. The high court ruled twice in June just days apart for Wilmer clients in closely watched patent cases that generated substantial amicus briefing from the pharmaceutical industry, biotechnology sector and Silicon Valley.
In litigation over university ownership of inventions, Wilmer litigation partner Mark Fleming, arguing for the first time in the Supreme Court, successfully defended Roche Molecular Systems Inc. in a dispute with Stanford University. Stanford sued Roche for alleged infringement over the company’s HIV test kits, saying the university owned the patents because the technology behind them was developed by a university researcher using federal funding.
