W. Chad Shear

Even as a $2.54 billion verdict was read aloud in a Delaware courtroom, signaling defeat for client Gilead Sciences Inc., Shear and his team at Fish & Richardson PC never lost faith the decision would be vacated.

“Hearing that number read out loud in court is pretty astonishing and it’s one of those things that you kind of feel a little numb to at first,” Shear said. “But we never lost the belief that we were right and we always believed that this patent was invalid.”

The jury found that Gilead infringed a patent relating to a hepatitis C drug.

Two years later, in March 2018, Shear and his team convinced a judge, through a motion for judgment as a matter of law, the patent held by Idenix Pharmaceuticals was invalid due to lack of enablement. Idenix Pharmaceuticals LLC et al. v. Gilead Sciences Inc., 14-00846 (D. of Delaware, filed July 1, 2014).

The origins of the dispute date back to 2011, when Gilead purchased Pharmasset, a smaller pharmaceutical company which had been conducting research in hopes of finding a cure for hepatitis C. After reaching a breakthrough and attaining approval from the Food and Drug Administration, Gilead released the drugs Sovaldi and Harvoni, which aimed to cure hepatitis C.

Subsequently, Idenix Pharmaceuticals sued for patent infringement, triggering a global legal battle between Idenix and Gilead, taking Shear to courtrooms in Australia, Canada, the UK, Norway, Germany, and other countries.

Victorious in every court, the final showdown brought Shear back to the U.S. where despite the jury’s initial award, which was the largest patent infringement verdict in U.S. history, he again found success.

“It was one of the most exciting cases of my career,” Shear said.

But it would not be the last time Shear would have to defend the patent for the Hepatitis curing-drug.

In 2017, a nonprofit known as The Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge, filed 10 petitions with the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board seeking to challenge intellectual property rights relating to Sovaldi.

Shear, with the help from Dorothy P. Whelan, also from Fish and attorneys from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, were able to defeat all 10 inter partes review at the petition phase.

“It meant a lot to me to be in a position to help defend a patent that was at the core of this major scientific breakthrough,” he said.

Shear is a principal in Fish’s San Diego office and a leader in the firm’s life sciences and pharmaceutical litigation group.

— Blaise Scemama