Risk Update

Disqualification Battles — Pharma Patent DQ Denied, R Kelly Counsel Clash

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“Novartis’ DQ Bid Sinks In Gilenya Row” —

  • “A federal judge in Delaware has rejected a legal effort to prevent a Washington, D.C., patent lawyer from representing an Indian pharmaceutical company in a patent fight with Novartis over the blockbuster multiple sclerosis drug Gilenya.”
  • “The latest word from the Delaware court came Tuesday in Novartis’ bid to disqualify Chidambaram Iyer of Sughrue Mion PLLC from representing Shilpa Pharma Inc., the Pennsylvania arm of a generic drugmaker based in Raichur, India. Shilpa sued Novartis last year, alleging that an active ingredient in the drug the Swiss giant has been approved to sell since 2010 did some of the same things that are described in the language of a patent that Shilpa landed from the U.S. Patent and Trademark office six years later.”
  • “The same year Shilpa had secured the patent — in late 2016 — representatives from Shilpa tried to convince Novartis to license the patent but were rebuffed. Since last November, Novartis’ lawyers have been trying to prevent Sughrue Mion’s Iyer from representing Shilpa in the case because Shilpa identified him ‘as the only named Shilpa witness to several 2016 discussions with Novartis about licensing the patent.'”
  • “Earlier this month, Robinson came down on the side of Shilpa’s lawyers. She wrote that Iyer’s “personal knowledge is not a basis for the allegations of willful and induced infringement. ‘There is no evidence that Mr. Iyer would so testify,’ she added in her 7-page report.”

“As R. Kelly’s Chicago trial nears, things get testy between defendants” —

  • “With less than two months to go until ex-R&B superstar R. Kelly and two of his former associates go on trial in Chicago, the sparks are starting to fly.”
  • “On Wednesday, lawyers for former Kelly manager Derrel McDavid blasted claims by the singer’s attorney that there may be a conflict of interest with McDavid’s legal team as ‘either woefully uninformed or purposely mendacious.'”
  • “The response also criticized Kelly’s lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, for what they called a ‘disingenuous’ attempt to link one of McDavid’s current attorneys, Vadim Glozman, to famed Chicago defense attorney Edward Genson, who represented Kelly in his child pornography trial in Cook County in 2008 that ended with an acquittal.”
  • “Glozman worked for Genson’s law practice from 2012 to 2017, when it was closed due to Genson’s failing health. Genson died of cancer in 2020.”
  • “Bonjean also pointed to an interview Genson gave to a Chicago Sun-Times columnist in 2019, when he was in the advanced stages of terminal cancer, in which Genson said Kelly was ‘guilty as hell’ and that he’d helped keep the singer out of trouble for a decade after his acquittal.”
  • “‘Because Glozman arguably owes a duty of loyalty to Kelly because he was a member of the firm that represented Kelly, he is in a conflicted position,’ Bonjean wrote. ‘This potential conflict may be an actual conflict if Glozman possesses privileged information that he may or can use to the benefit of his client or to the detriment of Mr. Kelly at a joint trial.'”
  • “In response, McDavid’s legal team called that assertion ‘disingenuous, insulting, and perhaps worse: pointless.'”
  • “The Sun-Times column, their motion said, omitted that a heavily medicated Genson was ‘rushed to the hospital shortly after the interview took place and that the interviewer only entered Mr. Genson’s home through false pretenses.'”
  • “In an emailed statement Wednesday, Sun-Times interim Editor-in-Chief Steve Warmbir said the newspaper ‘completely stands by its 2019 interview of Ed Genson… The columnist did nothing remotely improper regarding the interview of Mr. Genson, who was quite lucid at the time,’ Warmbir said.”