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Fish & Richardson Named Law360 Life Sciences Practice Group of the Year
Fish & Richardson has been named a 2017 Life Sciences Practice Group of the Year by Law360 for winning multiple, bet-the-company life sciences patent infringement cases, scoring closely-watched, industry-shaping inter partes review (IPR) victories at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), and building valuable billion-dollar patent portfolios for life science clients over the past year.
In June 2017, Fish won a $235 million jury verdict for GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in a patent infringement lawsuit involving GSK's highly successful drug Coreg. For client Gilead Sciences, Fish proved litigation and business misconduct by Merck and wiped out a $200 million infringement verdict before winning $14 million in attorneys' fees in July 2017. Fish also had important wins for Allergan, Aptalis Pharmatech and Ivax International, and Iroko and Iceutica.
At the PTAB, Fish won three much-heralded IPRs for Coherus BioSciences in 2017 that invalidated three patents covering competitor AbbVie's blockbuster biologic drug Humira®. These were the first-ever IPR decisions that invalidated patents for AbbVie's biologic, which was the highest-selling drug in 2016 with $16 billion in global sales. At the Federal Circuit, Fish upheld client Gilead's PTAB win against Idenix related to its blockbuster hepatitis C therapies in June 2017.
Fish's powerhouse patent team helped many life sciences companies develop valuable patent portfolios for their breakthrough therapeutics, diagnostics, and disruptive platform technologies. For biopharma immunotherapy startup IFM Therapeutics, Fish's team filed 47 patent applications in the year before Bristol-Myers Squibb acquired two of IFM's oncology programs in a deal valued at $2.3 billion in August 2017. Handling worldwide patent strategy for client Loxo Oncology since 2014 led to a $1.5 billion deal with Bayer in November 2017 giving them partial U.S. rights to two drugs (with an upfront payment of $400 million to Loxo), while Loxo maintained ownership of other drugs in development. Fish got client Impossible Foods' first patent issued in July 2017 for its "plant-based burger" and helped the company garner $75 million in funding. For Samumed, a company that Forbes has called "the most valuable biotechnology startup on the planet," Fish got 114 patents issued in 2017 and handled diligence on $300 million in funding.