Richard de Bodo

Last year, De Bodo won a temporary restraining order on behalf of his client, APP Pharmaceuticals, in a long-running patent infringement case.

The order was issued against Navinta LLC, Sandoz Inc. and Sandoz LLC, preventing them from marketing and launching their generic version of APP's market-leading Naropin anesthetic.

Later in the year, De Bodo moved for a preliminary injunction, followed by an evidentiary hearing with experts.

Before final arguments could be conducted, Navinta and Sandoz proposed a settlement and agreed to remain bound by the temporary restraining order until a settlement was completed.

Litigation has been put on hold, pending settlement talks, he said.

Along the way, De Bodo had to make understandable to the court some highly arcane medical concepts.

"Navinta argued that because the vials of the drug it was proposing to sell would contain higher concentrations of the drug than the concentration covered by the patent, then Navinta couldn't be infringing the patents," he said.

But, De Bodo added, "We established that Navinta would have encouraged physicians to obtain its high-concentration products and to dilute them and use them at the lower concentrations by the patents."

De Bodo also had to fend off an attack on the patents' validity, and he did so by using "some very talented leaders in the field of anesthesiology."

"This was a real breakthrough at the time the patents came out," he said.

- PAT BRODERICK

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