Welcome to Skilled in the Art. I'm Law.com IP reporter Scott Graham. Here's what's crossing my desk today:

• Anti-aging supplement makes law firms feel young again.

• Taiwanese camera lens makers square off in Texas

• IP/antitrust scholar joins White & Case

As always, you can email me your feedback and follow me on Twitter.

Cooley partner Michael Attanasio. (Photo by Tom Kurtz)

 

Nutritional Supplements Bring Out Firms' Youthful Vigor

A dispute over nutritional supplements that purport to have anti-aging properties has led to a fountain of billables for Cooley, Covington & Burling, Baker & Hostetler, Foley Hoag and Steptoe & Johnson.

Publicly traded ChromaDex Inc. is suing venture-backed Elysium Health for patent infringement in Delaware and for contract and trade-secret claims in California. The California case is scheduled to go to trial next month. The PTAB has already held a trial on patent validity, with mixed results.

Each company markets a dietary supplement whose ingredients include nicotinamide riboside, or NR, a compound researchers say has been proven to extend life spans—though only in mice, so far. Irvine, California-based ChromaDex licensed patents on the compound from Dartmouth College in 2012. It sells a product called Tru Niagen and, for a time, supplied NR and another ingredient to Elysium that makes up that company's Basis supplement.

Things went sour in 2016. ChromaDex alleges that Elysium stiffed it on a $3 million shipment after getting inside information from a ChromaDex executive about supply costs and pricing for other customers. Elysium then hired away the executive who, ChromaDex alleges, took detailed sales information with him.

Elysium counters in court papers that ChromaDex is just a supplier who grew envious of Elysium's success in the direct-to-consumer market and tried to elbow it aside. ChromaDex used Elysium and other customers "as a stalking horse to create the dietary supplement market for NR so that ChromaDex could then introduce its own DTC product, cut off the ingredient supply to its customers, and seize the market for itself," Elysium contends.

ChromaDex's California team features Cooley partner Michael Attanasio and associates Barrett Anderson, Craig TenBroeck, Sophia Rios, and Jayme Staten, plus Covington partners Mitchell Kamin and Philip Irwin.

Elysium is represented by Baker & Hostetler partners Michael Matthias, Joseph Sacca, Esterina Giuliani, Benjamin Pergament, counsel Kristin Keranen, and associate Elizabeth Treckler, plus Foley Hoag partners Donald Ware, Marco Quina and Julia Huston.

The patent suit is on hold pending the outcome of the California case. Elysium has already taken a shot via the PTAB at the two NR patents ChromaDex is asserting. The PTAB declined to institute proceedings on the first. On the second, it found one claim patentable, but invalidated four others, as anticipated by a 90-year-old study of skim milk.

Foley Hoag partners Ware, Brendan Jones and Jeremy Younkin represented Elysium before the PTAB. Ware, Younkin, and Foley associates Peter Ellis and Urszula Nowak represent Elysium in the Delaware patent case, along with local counsel Ashby & Geddes.

Covington partner Jason Fowler and Haley Guiliano partner James Haley Jr. represent ChromaDex in Delaware, along with local counsel Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor.

Steptoe & Johnson partners John Abramic, Jay Nuttall and Harold Fox and associate Jamie Lucia represented ChromaDex licensor Dartmouth at the PTAB.

An infringing HP Pavilion X360 camera assembly, as alleged by Largan Precision.

 

Lens Maker Uses Medical Imaging to Make Infringement Case

I've seen a lot of ruthless IP litigation over the last several years, but I'm thinking it might be hard to top the Taiwanese camera lens market.

Largan Precision won a $50 million judgment in Taiwan's Intellectual Property Court two years ago against Ability Opto-Electronics Technology (AOET) for trade secret theft. The litigation involved a criminal indictment, according to Largan, and AOET was forced to hand over some of its Taiwanese patents.

Now Largan is suing AOET again—plus competitor Newmax Technology and HP Inc— this time for infringement of its U.S. patents in the Eastern District of Texas. Largan alleges in a complaint filed Wednesday that it used a CT scanner to study the multi-lens systems in 15 HP products and confirm its suspicions of infringement. None of the three companies would identify which model lenses are used in the products, Largan alleges.

"With AOET, Newmax, and HP each declining to take responsibility for the ongoing and willful infringement of Largan's intellectual property, Largan brings this case to enforce its duly-earned United States patent rights," states the complaint, which is signed by Fisch Sigler partner Alan Fisch.

Largan brought similar suits against competitor Genius Optical and Samsung Electronics in 2013. Largan settled both—after a favorable summary judgment ruling against Samsung and a loss on summary judgment to Genius Optical.

IP (and Antitrust) Lateral: White & Case

White & Case has brought aboard University of Florida law professor Daniel Sokol as a senior adviser. Sokol will continue at Florida full time while pitching in at the law firm's Miami and Washington, D.C., offices.

Sokol is co-editor of the The Cambridge Handbook of Antitrust, Intellectual Property and High Tech. He previously was an adviser at Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati.

J. Mark Gidley, global head of White & Case's antitrust practice, said in a written statement that his group typically handles at least one trial per year, "and Professor Sokol is the right academic to give our clients a big picture view on key aspects of antitrust law."

That's all from Skilled in the Art today. I'll see you all again on Tuesday.