Laurie Carr Mims

We won a rare judgment as a matter of law fending off a $450 million trade secret claim against Veeva Systems in New York federal court. Competitor Medidata Solutions sued Veeva alleging that several of its former employees had access to the company’s trade secrets, retained Medidata’s confidential documents, and used that information to unfairly compete with Medidata when they left to join Veeva. We convinced the court that Medidata’s “trade secrets” were vague business concepts at best, that Veeva never used Medidata trade secrets in developing its software, and that no reasonable jury could find in its favor. The Court granted judgment as a matter of law for Veeva at the end of Medidata’s case-in-chief.

We currently represent Shareholder Representative Services (SRS) in its capacity as representative of the former shareholders of Ablation Frontiers Inc. in a post-merger dispute with Medtronic, Inc. in Delaware Chancery Court. Medtronic has refused to make milestone payments totaling $175 million that are due to the former shareholders based on recent FDA approvals of a novel catheter Ablation Frontiers invented and developed for treatment of atrial fibrillation prior to the merger

We represent taxpayer and immigrant advocates in filing suit against the government to halt ICE from accessing protected taxpayer data. The court issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting ICE and DHS from using or viewing the protected taxpayer information they had already illegally received. The relief is rare and indicates how serious the privacy violations are.

We represented Vividion Therapeutics’ founding chemist in knocking out claims alleging that he conspired to divert valuable intellectual property from the company’s $2 billion sale to Bayer. A Vividion investor sued for breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, aiding and abetting, and unjust enrichment after one of the scientist’s patents was licensed to a subsequent life sciences startup. The Delaware Chancery Court dismissed the case with prejudice after concluding that the claims were derivative, not direct, and that plaintiffs’ allegations were insufficient to take advantage of an exception to the ordinary rules for derivative claims.

We represented Shareholder Representative Services (SRS) in its role as representative of the former shareholders of FerroKin Biosciences in a post-merger dispute with Shire Pharmaceuticals, which had refused to make a $45 million milestone payment related to the development of an experimental iron chelation drug. After a four-day bench trial, the Delaware Chancery Court entered judgment in favor of SRS, ruling in a 77-page opinion that the former FerroKin shareholders were entitled to the overdue $45 million milestone, as well as five years of interest on the payment and their attorneys’ fees and costs, which totaled more than $80 million. The judgment of the Court of Chancery was unanimously affirmed by the Delaware Supreme Court.

We represented Genentech as the victim of a massive trade secret theft by its former scientists and founders of JHL Biotech, which was developing biosimilar versions of Genentech’s cancer medicines. The Keker team reported the theft to the DOJ and FBI and cooperated with the government’s investigation, which led to the indictment, guilty pleas, and prison time for JHL’s founders and top executives. On the civil side, the team won a preliminary injunction forbidding JHL from commercializing its products. This broad injunction, which rested on a finding that Genentech had a likelihood of success on its trade secret misappropriation claims, led to a settlement with JHL, in which JHL agreed to abandon development of all four of its biosimilars of Genentech’s products, destroy all related cell lines, stipulate to a permanent injunction, fully cooperate with Genentech’s investigation, and reimburse Genentech for its legal fees.

We represented Zosano Pharma and its current and former CEOs in a consolidated securities class action concerning alleged misstatements regarding the company’s likelihood of FDA approval of its innovative lead product candidate, a migraine patch. The patch unexpectedly received a rejection by the FDA and then Zosano saw a drastic stock drop, which triggered plaintiffs to file this securities action and a follow-on derivative case. We prevailed on a motion to dismiss the purported class action and convinced the derivative action plaintiffs to also dismiss their case.

We represented Calithera Biosciences, an early-stage drug development company, in a milestone dispute arising out of a collaboration agreement. We obtained a favorable settlement before depositions began.

We represented Roche in a dispute concerning a breach of the company’s Collaboration Agreement with Plexxikon, Inc., now a subsidiary of Daiichi Sankyo. The agreement provides Plexxikon funding and Roche license to develop and commercialize certain drug candidates, which it successfully did with Zelboraf, a cancer-fighting drug. The agreement also provides Roche the right to bring litigation to enforce certain of Plexxikon’s patents implicated by the Collaboration Agreement. Plexxikon pursued a patent enforcement lawsuit against Novartis, which culminated in a $178 million judgment in favor of Plexxikon. However, under Plexxikon’s Collaboration Agreement with Roche, Roche should have been notified about the infringement and given the first right to proceed and control the litigation against Novartis, and was entitled to a portion of the proceeds of that litigation. We settled the dispute favorably.

We represented Netflix and 12 current and former employees in a federal prosecution against Michael Kail, a former Netflix employee. In coordination with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and FBI, we prepared the Netflix witnesses to testify during a two and a half-week trial in the Northern District of California. Mr. Kail was convicted of wire fraud, mail fraud, and money laundering.

We represented a biotechnology company developing a drug for a rare genetic disease in arbitration proceedings over its rights to develop its sole product under a collaboration agreement with a large pharmaceutical company. With our assistance, on the first day of the arbitration the parties reached a favorable settlement, which provided for our client’s acquisition of the life-saving drug it is developing. The FDA has now approved the drug and our client successfully conducted an IPO.

We represented Revance, a biotechnology company which develops next-generation dermatology products and therapeutic medicines, in a Delaware Chancery Court bench trial. The trial determined Revance’s worldwide rights to its injectable botulinum toxin product, as well as its ground-breaking topical botox product. Days after the trial, we finalized a settlement which returned all global rights to develop and commercialize both products across all indications to Revance, and resolved all outstanding litigation between the companies.

We successfully defended at trial an Am Law 50 law firm and one of its former partners against a $100 million claim. The plaintiff alleged malpractice and breach of fiduciary duty related to estate planning. After an eight-week trial in California state court, we won a complete victory.