According to the annual Top 100 Verdicts report by ALM’s VerdictSearch, five jury verdicts for Intellectual Property cases cracked the top 10 with a sixth breaking into the top 25 verdicts of 2016. While the amounts do not account for judicial reductions, offsets or appeals, the report indicates that the more than $4.67 billion in total jury awards from the top 6 IP verdicts alone show that intellectual property cases dominated the Top 100 in terms of total dollars awarded.
The publication ranked Idenix‘s $2.54 billion royalty share of Gilead Sciences‘ profits from two blockbuster hepatitis C drugs as the #1 IP verdict and #3 overall on its list of “Top 100 Verdicts of 2016.” According to the report, Idenix successfully asserted that Gilead willfully infringed Idenix’s patents relating to an antiviral compound used in the treatment of hepatitis C, resulting what commentators have stated is the largest patent infringement verdict in U.S. history.
The second highest IP verdict in VerdictSearch’s 2016 list, $940 million (including $700 million in punitive damages), went to medical software company Epic Systems in what commentators have said is one of the largest trade-secrets verdicts on record. According to the report, Epic successfully asserted that Tata misappropriated information related to Epic’s health care software.
The #3 and #4 IP verdicts of 2016 according to VerdictSearch, $625 million and $302 million, respectively, went to technology patent-holder VirnetX for infringement of four of VirnetX’s internet security patents infringement by several Apple products, including iPhones and iPads.
Merck won the 5th largest IP verdict of the year according to VerdictSearch, a $200 million award against Gilead. The report noted that Gilead Sciences v. Merck & Co. involved infringement of different patents relating to the same drug compound as the Idenix case. The case was filed by Gilead as a declaratory judgment action, but Merck & Co. won on its counterclaim.
CardiAQ‘s $70 million win in CardiAQ Valve Technologies, Inc. v. Neovasc Inc. was listed in VerdictSearch as the #6 IP verdict and tied for #21 overall. As noted in a previous post here, according to the report, the jury found that Neovasc breached the non-disclosure agreement between the parties, misappropriated CardiAQ’s trade secrets, and breached its duty of honest performance to CardiAQ.
According to the report, the 11 IP verdicts in the top 100 totaled approximately $4.8 billion, more than a threefold increase from 2015, when the total was $1.43 billion.
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