Ashok Ramani

Ashok Ramani heads Davis Polk LLP’s intellectual property litigation practice, where he represents major technology and healthcare companies, including Comcast Corp., Google LLP, MediaTek Inc., Netflix, Inc., Pfizer Inc., Signify Health Inc. and TSMC Ltd.

Ironically, he studied computer science as an undergraduate but switched to economics. “I decided computer science was not for me,” he said. But then came Harvard Law School, where he graduated cum laude. “I found I wanted to be a litigator and a trial lawyer, and even in the 1990s, it was clear that IP cases went to trial a lot. Also, it was the beginning of the dot-com boom, and I wanted to be in the Bay Area, so I realized that IP expertise was something tech companies would need.”

Ramani has been at Davis Polk for four years and has doubled the number of lawyers doing IP cases. “Working without a tech background is actually helpful to me because I have to get up to speed afresh in every case. That helps with breaking down and simplifying cases instead of getting lost in the weeds.”

IP theft is one arena where Ramani designs and drafts complaints to make the issues starkly clear. In a new trade secret theft suit for Pfizer, he cut through details to explain what was at stake. Two former Pfizer employees, he wrote, “saw the promise of Pfizer’s diabetes-and-obesity treatment in development [and] decided to steal the hard work of Pfizer’s scientists and clinicians for their own profit and gain.” Pfizer Inc. v. Regor Therapeutics Inc., 3:22- cv-00190 (D. Conn., filed Feb. 2, 2022).

The stolen diabetes secrets were valuable enough that the former Pfizer employees were able to secure $50 million up front to be followed by as much $1.5 billion from a rival pharmaceutical company to fund their new enterprise, the complaint says. It adds that the former employees founded their new company, Regor, before they left Pfizer.

The former employees, Min Zhong and Xiayang Qiu, countersued in March, seeking the court’s declaration that no theft occurred. One trade publication counted the word “denied” 151 times in that pleading.

Ramani said he could not comment on the litigation, but his publicly-filed pleadings make the stakes evident. When a different employee who left Pfizer was known to have access to the company’s COVID-19 vaccine formula, Ramani was able to get a restraining order within hours. Pfizer Inc. v. Chunxiao Li, 3:21-cv-01980 (S.D. Cal., filed Nov. 23, 2021).

“Success breeds imitation, and competitors have been trying to recruit Pfizer’s employees relentlessly, especially during 2021,” he wrote.

– John Roemer