Juanita R. Brooks

Brooks is regarded as one of the best intellectual property litigation lawyers in the county, but she first developed an interest in technology-related law 19 years ago while working on contract fraud cases as a criminal defense attorney.

“I know it doesn’t seem like it but it was a natural segue to go from criminal defense to patent litigation,” she said.

In what she called “quite the epic saga,” Brooks and her team at Fish & Richardson defended Gilead Sciences Inc. in an infringement claim brought by pharmaceutical powerhouse Merck & Co. Merck claimed it invented the patent related to a hepatitis C drug produced by Gilead, according to court documents.

In the first phase of the trial, the jury found Merck’s patents were valid and that Gilead was liable.

Merck demanded $2 billion in damages but after hearing from the defense’s expert witness, the jury awarded Merck $200 million as a reasonable royalty.

“That felt like quite a victory right there but then we had another part of the case, the unclean hands,” Brooks said.

In a rare equitable defense tried to the judge, Brooks was able to prove, through tenacious examination of its attorneys, that Merck had committed business and litigation misconduct and the accused patents could not be enforced.

The $200 million jury verdict was vacated and Merck was ordered to pay $14 million in attorney fees.

Merck appealed, but after Brooks made an hour and a half-long argument before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the ruling was upheld in April 2018. Gilead Sciences Inc. v. Merck & Co. Inc., 16-2302 and 16-2615, (Fed. Cir. April 25, 2018).

Brooks is known for her ability to make complex technological concepts easily understandable for juries. This skill played a major role in securing a defense victory for her client Microsoft Corp. against infringement claims brought by Parallel Networks.

The case involved patents covering load balancing methods and apparatuses for creating and managing websites.

When the accused product was developed a decade later, internet sales had just hit one trillion.

“The jury may never understand dynamic load balancing. They do understand that however you were handling back when there was one person ordering one pizza, is not going to be the same as when how you’re handling over one trillion dollars in sales.”

In a separate matter, Brooks is the lead attorney representing Apple Inc. in a massive legal battle with Qualcomm Inc. over microchip patents, contract disputes and antitrust violations.

— Blaise Scemama