Counsel for a biotechnology firm retained Cornerstone Research in a class action monopolization case.
Counsel for a biotechnology firm retained Cornerstone Research in a class action monopolization case. The plaintiffs accused the firm of monopolizing the sale of specialty chemicals used in diagnostics and medical research by enforcing an allegedly unenforceable patent. The patent at issue was one of several overlapping patents the firm owned on the manufacture and use of the chemicals. The plaintiffs alleged that absent enforcement of the patent at issue, licenses to the remaining overlapping patents would have been available at reduced royalty rates and additional, competing suppliers would have entered the market, forcing the defendant to charge lower prices for the chemicals it supplied.
The expert’s analysis showed that the defendant’s prices did not decline in response to adverse rulings.
Cornerstone Research worked with experts on both liability and damages. Our liability expert testified on the value of a single patent in licenses that include multiple, overlapping patents and concluded that the patent at issue provided the defendants with no incremental market power. The expert also observed that there were many suppliers of products containing the patented material throughout the class period and concluded that additional entry would have created no incremental competitive pressure.
Our damages expert opined that the plaintiffs’ damages methodology for estimating benchmark prices was not grounded in economic theory and ignored real world evidence. The expert’s analysis showed that the defendant’s prices did not decline in response to adverse rulings on the patent at issue and only declined after other key patents expired, leading the expert to conclude that there were no damages resulting from enforcement of the patent at issue.