The flipside of firms’ suits against clients who don’t pay is the malpractice suit.
Encyclopaedia Britannica has filed a doozy, claiming more than $250 million in damages from Dickstein Shapiro’s (mis)handling of a patent application.
More on the suit, Dickstein’s successful work, and the BigLaw firm they turned to for support after the jump.
The malpractice suit stems from a long and complicated patent dispute that goes back more than 20 years and involves technology covering the use of multimedia on CD-ROM. In 2007, Encyclopaedia Britannica sued several GPS manufactures for more than $250 million, claiming they infringed two patents that were outgrowths of a patent the company originally filed for in 1989. Defense attorneys for the GPS manufacturers argued that the two patents were invalid because of problems with the original 1989 patent. That original patent actually dated back only to 1994 — not 1989 — because a patent continuation application was mishandled in 1993, they argued. A federal judge agreed and declared the two patents invalid in 2009, and Encyclopaedia Britannica is appealing.
Not content to make it about the firm generally, Encyclopedia Britannica points the fickle finger directly at one Dickstein lawyer: Jon Grossman (Chicago BA ’77, Johns Hopkins MS ’82, American JD ’86)
Encyclopaedia Britannica’s malpractice suit blames Dickstein Shapiro partner Jon D. Grossman for “fatal prosecution errors that led to the invalidity” of its patents. Grossman said the problems with the continuation application he filed in 1993 were a result of clerical errors and that Encyclopaedia Britannica had not intentionally abandoned its patent, according to a affidavit he submitted to the PTO.
The malpractice suit claims that Grossman’s attempts to remedy his earlier mistakes with the PTO further hurt Encyclopaedia Britannica’s patent infringement case against the GPS manufacturers.
Dickstein Shapiro does have some nice plaintiff-side wins under its belt, as we mentioned they won a $432 million infringement suit against Boston Scientific in 2008.
For defense, the firm has turned to John Aldock (Northwestern BS ’64, Penn LLB ’67) of Goodwin Procter, who says
The complaint is based on a mischaracterization of the facts and the law. The lawsuit is without merit and will be vigorously defended.
Britannica has been struggling with the “digital revolution” for a long time. After 225 or so years of unchallenged supremacy, it was one of the most-famous victims of the CD revolution back in the 80s and 90s, so you can imagine how it’s been struggling to get back on top in the internet era. Business Week profiled the Encyclopaedia’s troubles back in 97, and they haven’t changed much since.
