Life Sciences Litigation

Patent Litigation

Alston & Bird’s Patent Litigation Group handles biotech, pharmaceutical and medical technology actions in federal and state court, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the International Trade Commission, as well as appeals and arbitration proceedings domestically and internationally. Our litigation teams include lawyers who have tried major, complex cases, have advanced technical degrees and understand both the law and science. Working closely with lawyers in the regulatory and antitrust practices, we have special expertise in Hatch-Waxman litigation and have developed successful litigation strategies for matters involving patent infringement, patent invalidity and enforceability, Orange Book listings, market exclusivity, patent term extension, patent certifications and settlements.

Representative Patent Litigation

• We represent the patentee in a patent infringement case involving a vaccine to prevent the most significant disease affecting the U.S. swine industry.
• We successfully obtained a finding of no violation on behalf of our client and their affiliates in an investigation regarding nitrile rubber medical examination gloves. The Commission affirmed the judge’s initial determination following trial that the patent asserted by the Complainant was invalid on two separate bases.
• We are currently representing a medical imaging company in the field of cardiac ultrasound imaging, in a case in federal court in the Middle District of North Carolina. We have already achieved confidential settlements with some of the defendants.

Commercial Litigation

Alston & Bird’s 150 commercial litigators are among the best in the country. For the last two years, Corporate Counsel magazine has named Alston & Bird among the top 10 law firms in the country mentioned by corporate counsel as their go-to law firm for litigation matters. We have litigated cases in every state in the United States and numerous foreign jurisdictions, and our clients regularly engage us to protect their interests in bet-the-company complex litigation, including products liability, antitrust, securities, class action, government investigation, contract and other commercial matters.

Representative Commercial Litigation

• We won the bench trial of a theft of trade secrets case in which the plaintiff alleged that our client, a pharmaceutical company, misappropriated trade secrets from the plaintiff's confidential drug development protocol.
• We pursued contractual claims against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on behalf of our client, an international managed care provider.
• We obtained parallel dismissals of a federal False Claims Act qui tam action alleging the performance of medically unnecessary cardiac catheterizations, and a related state class action brought by patients against the facilities where the catheterizations were performed. We defeated appeals of the dismissals.
• We represented a specialty chemical manufacturer of products including pesticides, in defense of monopolization claims related to our client’s acquisition of multiple IP rights and alleged refusal to license its IP. We defeated the motion for preliminary injunction filed by the competitor seeking to enjoin our client from enforcing its IP.