Legal News

Dickstein Shapiro Wins $431.8 Million Patent Verdict

By Dan Slater

As the snow snips at our window and we begin to ponder the subway ride home, the Law Blog can’t help wishing we were an intellectual-property lawyer at Dickstein Shapiro tonight. Earlier today, the firm won a $431.8 million patent verdict against Boston Scientific, brought on behalf of a Dr. Bruce Saffran. If the verdict holds up, the plaintiffs firm stands to collect — according to Law Blog fuzzy math — a contingency fee that could exceed $120 million. That buys a lot of hot toddies.

A federal jury in Marshall, Texas found that Boston Scientific’s Taxus Express and Taxus Liberte drug-coated stents infringe the patent of Saffran, an “independent inventor.” According to Saffran’s lawyers at Dickstein, the award is the sixth-highest ever to be delivered in a patent infringement case in the U.S. Here’s the story from WSJ. Kenyon & Kenyon represented Boston Scientific.

Handling big-stakes plaintiffs work is something many big law firms shy away from. But not Dickstein. Over the past decade or so, the firm has taken on a handful of plaintiff-side class-action opt-out antitrust cases. For instance, according to a 2004 American Lawyer story (link not available), Dickstein represented a group of 153 companies that in 1999 opted out of the vitamin price-fixing class action. In 2002 the Dickstein group settled its case for $2 billion.

In the Boston Scientific case, however, Dickstein lawyers can’t pop the Champagne just yet. A spokesman for Boston Scientific said that the company does not intend to record a charge related to the case at this time “because we believe we will prevail on appeal.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 12, 2008 (boomark / email).