Daily Journal Names Fish & Richardson Principals Juanita Brooks and Jon Singer Among California's Top IP Lawyers

Fish & Richardson's San Diego-based principals Juanita Brooks and Jon Singer were named to the Daily Journal's 2017 list of "Top Intellectual Property Lawyers" in California for the positive impacts they've had on technological progress and the advancement of IP law.

Brooks has been named to the list multiple times. This is the first year for Singer, who relocated to Fish's Southern California office from Minnesota in 2016.

To demonstrate their influence, the publication highlighted recent high-profile cases that saw Brooks and Singer deliver positive, high-dollar outcomes for clients in both the technology and pharmaceutical fields, including: Allergan, Microsoft, and Gilead Sciences, to name a few.

"This is no time to be modest," Singer said in the Journal interview. "This has been a very good year."

In the past two years, Singer, an acclaimed trial lawyer who heads Fish's life science litigation practice, has tried and won cases concerning the world's top-selling drugs, Humira and Harvoni.

Singer led oral arguments early this year in a crucial patent review of the world's No.1 selling drug, Humira AbbVie Biotechnology Ltd.'s rheumatoid arthritis drug that had $16 billion in global sales in 2016 alone. At issue, were three patents related to Humira's dosing regiments.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board invalidated AbbVie's cornerstone patent claims in May, marking the first time a Humira patent in the company's portfolio was invalidated in the U.S.

"The outcome doesn't invalidate all of AV's patents, and my client still has to get past the Food and Drug Administration, but it clears and important hurdle in the patent landscape," he said. "It's a big deal. My client (Coherus BioSciences Inc.) can now proceed to work on its biosimilar work without this hurdle."

Brooks, a leading patent litigator who has earned praises such as "a titan of the patent bar," “icon of IP," and "jury whisperer," has also had a year to applaud.

In a recent case, Brooks' client GlaxoSmithKline PLC successfully brought suit against Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., claiming Teva persuaded physicians to prescribe their generic product and therefore infringed on a patent covering Coreg a drug used to treat high blood pressure and heart failure.

"We were able to use Teva's own documents to show that they fully intended to try to encourage physicians to prescribe their generic instead of Coreg to treat heart failure," Brooks said.

A jury ordered Teva to pay more than $235 million to GlaxoSmithKline. The case is ongoing. A post-trial motions hearing is scheduled for October and a bench trial on equitable defenses will follow.

The Journals' list of "Top Intellectual Property Lawyers" published on August 16.