We can finally confess something that’s been bugging us for several months. We’ve been picking Litigators of the Week for a little more than a year, and we’ve never selected a woman. It wasn’t because we didn’t want to, or because we weren’t looking. We were. In fact, it’s been surprising and more than a little disturbing to see how few women are leading the cases we cover at the Litigation Daily. (For a provocative discussion of the challenges that women litigators face, check out Amy Kolz’s 2007 American Lawyer story “ Obstacle Course.”)
That makes our pick for this early edition of Litigator of the Week all the more satisfying. Dianne Elderkin of Woodcock Washburn led the trial team that on Monday won what is considered to be the biggest patent infringement verdict ever: $1.67 billion for Johnson & Johnson’s Centocor Ortho Biotech unit, which sued Abbott Laboratories in the Eastern District of Texas for infringing a patent co-owned by Centocor and New York University. The jury concluded that Abbott’s blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis drug Humira–which accounted for fully 15 percent of the company’s revenue last year–infringed Centocor’s patent. Damages pile up pretty fast on a product that generates $4.5 billion a year. Here’s our story about the verdict, which includes links to our previous coverage of the case and to the jury form.
This content has been archived. It is available through our partners, LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law.
To view this content, please continue to their sites.
Not a Lexis Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
Not a Bloomberg Law Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law are third party online distributors of the broad collection of current and archived versions of ALM's legal news publications. LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law customers are able to access and use ALM's content, including content from the National Law Journal, The American Lawyer, Legaltech News, The New York Law Journal, and Corporate Counsel, as well as other sources of legal information.
For questions call 1-877-256-2472 or contact us at [email protected]