Jason G. Sheasby

In June 2018, Sheasby led an Irell & Manella team that persuaded a federal jury to award $400 million to the intellectual property arm of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, known as KAIST, in a patent infringement dispute with Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and others over an advanced 3-D transistor called a bulk FinFET.

Earlier this year, Chief U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap of Marshall, Texas, following a bench trial to resolve remaining issues, ruled that the defendants had no right to the patent, despite their post-verdict claims. KAIST IP US LLP v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., 16-CV01314 (E.D. Tex., filed Nov. 29, 2016). An appeal is likely.

A major challenge for Sheasby in the case was that the patent had been licensed to another company a couple of years earlier for $6.5 million — so how could he explain to jurors the gulf between that figure and the big damages award he was seeking from Samsung?

“I analogized the situation to that of Stephen Curry when he was new to the NBA, fresh out of Davidson and not paid very much,” he said. “People knew he was good but not amazing. Then everyone saw what an extraordinary player he was and he got a huge salary. It was a true analogy, because KAIST’s new transistor was based on a novel design and was slow to catch on.”

Sheasby said his Steph Curry ploy got good-natured pushback from his team.

“Everybody teased me about using a San Francisco basketball player before an East Texas jury,” he said. “And I’m a Lakers fan myself. But everybody loves Curry, even in Texas.”

A trial highlight for Sheasby came when he assigned a first-year associate, Charlotte J. Wen, to examine an expert witness who designed microchips for AMD Inc. and could give an industry view of chip performance. “She was awesome,” he said.

Sheasby’s other big win in 2018 came in February after different counsel, defending Gilead Sciences Inc. in a patent trial over Gilead’s hepatitis C drugs, sustained a $2.5 billion jury verdict in favor of the plaintiff — a sum said to be the largest patent verdict in history. Sheasby was then brought in to work with trial counsel on post-trial litigation.

“We rethought the case from its inception and found a way to tell a compelling story in our JMOL motion,” he said. Chief U.S. District Judge Leonard P. Stark of Wilmington, Delaware, was persuaded to reverse the verdict. Idenix Pharmaceuticals LLC v. Gilead Sciences Inc., 14-CV00846 (D. Del. Filed July 1, 2014).

“I’m a big believer that law is a team sport,” Sheasby said.

— John Roemer