A Singular Verdict From the Lone Star State

[WSJ_law_blog]

While much of the legal world had its eyes trained either on all-things Madoff or all-things Scotus on Monday, the attention of two groups of lawyers down in Marshall, Texas were presumably focused elsewhere, namely, on whether a jury would return with a verdict in a huge patent case involving Johnson & Johnson and Abbott Laboratories.

When the jury did hand down its verdict, the collective anxiety presumably turned to glee for the J&J lawyers, a group from Woodcock Washburn, led by Dianne Elderkin, and disappointment for the Abbott Labs crew, from WilmerHale, led by Bill Lee. The jury awarded a unit of J&J, called Centocor, $1.67 billion for infringing a patent on J&J’s drug Remicade that helped Abbott create the Humira arthritis drug. The verdict represented one of the largest damages awards in U.S. history. Click here for the WSJ story; here for a report from the WSJ’s Health Blog; and here and here for reports from Bloomberg and the AP, respectively.

In the lawsuit, filed in 2007, J&J accused Abbott of using patented technology that had been exclusively licensed to J&J from New York University, claiming that Abbott had developed Humira with it. Abbott argued that Humira was novel and fully derived from human DNA, whereas J&J’s Remicade is partially derived from mouse DNA.

According to Bloomberg, Humira is approved for six conditions, including the skin disease psoriasis and Crohn’s Disease, an inflammation of the bowel. The largest number of prescriptions is for rheumatoid arthritis.

Abbott said it would appeal the verdict.