Juanita R. Brooks

Brooks helped GlaxoSmithKline LLC win $235 million in damages in a patent infringement lawsuit against Teva Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. this summer.

The case involved GlaxoSmithKline’s drug Coreg, which is used to treat hypertension and congestive heart failure. GlaxoSmithKline v. Teva Pharmaceuticals USA Inc., 14-cv00878 (D. Del. June 20, 2017).

One month earlier, Brooks successfully defended longtime client Microsoft Corp. in a case involving the company’s alleged infringement of two patents that cover methods and apparatuses for creating and managing custom websites. The jury took less than an hour to reject Parallel Networks Licensing LLC’s claims against Microsoft. Parallel Networks Licensing LLC v. Microsoft Corporation, 13-cv2073 (D. Del. May 11, 2017).

“Those were two back-to-back victories, one for the defense and one for the plaintiff, which felt very good,” said Brooks, a principal at Fish & Richardson.

She said a major key to her success in intellectual property cases “is to be able to take what is complicated technology and make it understandable to both a judge and a jury.”

Brooks and her team were able to convince a judge last year that Merck & Co. had unclean hands in securing $200 million in damages in a patent trial against Gilead Sciences Inc. The damages were wiped out as a result. Gilead Sciences Inc. v. Merck & Co., 13-cv04057 (N.D. Cal., filed Aug. 30, 2013).

— Lyle Moran