Brian M. Kramer

SAN DIEGO - Brian M. Kramer is the head of the litigation group at Morrison Foerster LLP's San Diego office. He's been with the firm since 2003. His successful intellectual property practice was a goal as far back as high school.
"My high school yearbook says I wanted to be a patent attorney, even though I barely knew what that was," Kramer said. "I'd heard that math and science and the law went together. So far, it's working out."
After law school, Kramer clerked for judges in the District of Delaware and at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. "At the time, Delaware had the most patent cases per judge of any district. And at the Federal Circuit, my judge had been a patent attorney for 30 years before he went on the bench."
That would be U.S. District Judge Richard Linn, who now has taken senior status and moved to Florida, where each year he conducts the Leahy Institute of Advanced Patent Studies. Kramer plans to attend the event in January.
In February, on the morning of jury selection, Kramer, his cross-office team and opposing counsel agreed on a $775 million settlement in favor of his client, the Japanese maker of a patented recycling antibody technology that improved the defendant's accused product, ravulizumab, by decreasing the number of infusion treatments needed to treat a blood disease. Chugai Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. v. Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. 1:18-cv- 01802 (D. Del., filed Nov. 15, 2018).
"On summary judgment, the judge denied the other side's invalidity motion and ruled for us on claim construction," Kramer said. Left to be tried was a willfulness claim that could have trebled the damages award. "They risked enhanced damages, and they stipulated to the validity of Chugai's antibody patents." It was one of the largest amounts awarded in a patent case in recent years.
Kramer was on the defense side for Chugai in an earlier case on allegations that Chugai's patented hemophilia drug, emicizumab, infringed several of the plaintiff's patents. The drug is marketed in the U.S. by Genentech, Inc.; both companies are part of Roche Group. Baxalta Inc. et al. v. Genentech Inc. and Chugai Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., 1:17-cv-00509 (D. Del., filed May 4, 2017).
Baxalta filed the suit in an unsuccessful attempt to block emicizumab's launch, but Kramer filed a winning motion to dismiss Chugai from the case. Despite the ongoing litigation, the drug's sales have topped $3 billion.
The matter ended favorably, but not before Kramer and colleagues endured a Force 3 typhoon as they huddled in a hotel in Osaka, Japan. "We felt like we were in a boat on rocky seas," Kramer said. "But we got Chugai out of the case."