Juanita R. Brooks

Brooks has a knack for helping prominent companies win high-profile intellectual property cases.

The Fish & Richardson principal helped longtime client Microsoft Corp. fend off a patent infringement suit last year brought by Parallel Networks Licensing LLC.

A federal jury took less than an hour to deliver a defense verdict, and Brooks helped the company prevail in post-trial motions as well. Parallel Networks Licensing LLC v. Microsoft Corporation, 13-CV02073 (D. Del., May 11, 2017).

Load balancing, which refers to the distribution of network traffic across a group of servers, was a key focus of the case. Brooks said explaining the technology to the jury and how it had changed through the years played a major role in the win for Microsoft.

“The critical thing in a patent case is to make the technology, which can be very complex, accessible and understandable to the jury,” she said. “Most of the time when you are able to do that, you will be successful.”

Brooks also helped Fish secure $12.6 million in attorneys’ fees last year for work on a case in which the firm proved the other side was guilty of unclean hands.

Earlier in the patent case involving hepatitis C-curing drugs, a jury had awarded Merck & Co. $200 million in damages against Gilead Sciences Inc., Brooks’ client. Gilead Sciences Inc. v. Merck & Co., Inc., 13-CV04057 (N.D. Cal., filed Aug. 30, 2013).

But U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman reversed the 2016 verdict due to misconduct Brooks and her team exposed on the other side, such as a Merck patent prosecutor’s dishonesty with the court.

Brooks said the misconduct was not discovered overnight, but was revealed through a series of events, including testimony Fish lawyers elicited in the case.

“Hopefully what is accomplished is that we will see less of this type of behavior,” Brooks said.

— Lyle Moran