Why J&J's $1.7B Win in Abbott Humira Case May be Garbage

Abbott Labs‘ management is probably not worrying too much about the $1.7 billion damages award made in favor of Johnson & Johnson’s Centocor unit for Humira’s infringement on the latter’s Remicade patents. (It wasn’t worried enough to put out a press statement, for instance.)

That’s because the court that awarded the damages is a famous judicial hellhole. The patent court of the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas, presided over by Judge T. John Ward (pictured), has been unfavorably compared to the court in My Cousin Vinny.

You might be wondering why a case between New Jersey’s J&J and Illinois’ Abbott was being decided in Marshall, Texas, pop. 24,000, the “Pottery Capital of the World” and home of the “Fire Ant Festival.” This Technology Review story gives the answer:

… patent plaintiffs whose cases go to trial in Marshall win 88 percent of the time, according to research firm Legalmetric, compared with 68 percent nationwide.

While those odds still favor J&J’s win, there’s a 1 in 5 chance that the court has gotten it “wrong,” if you assume that the nationwide average is “right.”* Thus Marshall has long been known as a patent troll filing place, where trials are speeded up and the court decides in favor of the holder, usually the plaintiff. Tech Review again:

In the rough calculus of intellectual property litigation, tough judges equate with speedy cases — and that’s exactly what you want if you’re a plaintiff with limited cash, but potentially big-time settlement payments or damages from a company you claim is infringing on your patent.

Judge Ward, who decided this case, sits on an average of 23 patent cases a year. That would be a staggering workload in a normal federal court, except that a look at the docket in Centocor Inc. v. Abbott Laboratories, 07cv139, shows just 261 documents filed in the case, including the jury notes and verdict. Federal trials in pharma matters often reach thousands of filings before a trial starts. Not in Ward’s court, where everything’s kept simple so the good folk of Texas can understand it. (If lawyers in Ward’s court argue too much, they get “the rattlesnake speech.”)

J&J’s amended complaint in the case was just eight pages. Abbott’s reply was 12. The latter’s construction claim brief, featuring its pretrial legal arguments, was a comparatively Dr. Zhivago-like 35 pages. Did that, possibly, test Ward’s patience?

*Is my math wrong? Use the comments section to let me know.