Andrei Iancu

Iancu, the managing partner at Irell & Manella, was a part of the firm’s team which secured over $1.6 billion in verdicts and settlements for TiVo Inc.

He advised TiVo, a company known for its digital video recording technology, in a lawsuit it filed alleging Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. violated four patents. The case settled confidentially before trial in November.

TiVo received a “favorable settlement,” Iancu said, without disclosing specifics.

B/E Aerospace Inc. also relied on Iancu for counsel in a multi-venue legal dispute with MAG Aerospace Industries over aircraft toilet patents.

“That case had to do with airplane toilets, a topic no doubt of interest to many air travelers,” Iancu said. “B/E had new products out that added a new level of excitement into this marketplace.”

Plaintiff MAG Aerospace accused B/E of using inventions similar to its technology that allowed mechanics to fix airplane vacuum toilets without tools. Iancu was able to convince a federal judge to grant B/E three summary judgments of noninfringement, eliminating all of the plaintiff’s infringement claims. MAG Aerospace Industries Inc. v. B/E Aerospace Inc., 13-CV06089 (C.D. Cal., filed Aug. 20, 2013).

In March 2016, Iancu helped B/E get a complete defense win in two venues. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office invalidated the three patents MAG Aerospace asserted against B/E, concluding they were obvious based on prior art.

The following week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision that found B/E not to have infringed MAG Aerospace’s patents. Iancu argued at the hearing.

“What we wanted to do is to bring the case to as quick of a resolution as possible but also to maximize the client’s ability to win,” Iancu said.

“We were grateful to see that we were able to win in the district court before trial on summary judgment and also in parallel on invalidity in the Patent [and Trademark] Office,” he added.

Iancu had another victory in an inter partes review case on behalf of Sloan Kettering Institute for Cancer Research and its exclusive licensee, Juno Therapeutics, a biotechnology company that develops immunotherapies designed to treat cancer.

Kite Pharma Inc., a biotechnology company that aims to develop cancer immunotherapy products, attempted to invalidate Iancu’s clients’ patents. The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office reviewed the patent at issue but upheld all the claims.

“We showed the patent office that this technology was brand new to our clients and it was not what someone else had created first,” Iancu said. “A challenge here was how complex this science and technology is.”

“We had to explain it clearly, in understandable and scientifically correct terms,” Iancu added.

— Melanie Brisbon