Back in 2021, Barbara Mullin of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler landed Litigator of the Week honors after helping Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen fend off a challenge to the patent behind Invega Sustenna. The blockbuster injectable antipsychotic drug, which is used to treat schizophrenia and related disorders, generates more than $2 billion in annual sales in the U.S. The firm’s 2021 win followed an 11-day Zoom bench trial before U.S. District Judge Claire Cecchi in New Jersey. It partially stood up on appeal, but the Federal Circuit remanded the obviousness challenge brought by generic makers Teva and Mylan. After a team led by Mullin and colleagues Aron Fischer and Andrew Cohen represented Janssen back at the district court, Cecchi sided with the company again finding Teva hadn’t proven its invalidity-via-obviousness case in a 62-page decision made public this week. The Patterson Belknap team includes Lachlan Campbell-Verduyn, Jay Cho, Zhiqiang Liu, Meghan Larywon and Collin Hong.

A team led by William H. Taft V of Debevoise & Plimpton helped subsidiaries of Gramercy Funds Management keep the door open to more than $2.5 billion in claims against PDV Holdings Inc., the parent company of Citgo Petroleum Corp., as an alter ego of PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-owned oil and gas company. U.S. Circuit Judge Leonard Stark last week denied a hotly contested motion by the special master appointed to oversee the Citgo sale seeking to bar the sorts of alter ego litigation the Gramercy entities filed against PDVH in New York and Texas. (Stark has continued to oversee litigation brought by Venezuela’s creditors in the District of Delaware since his elevation to the Federal Circuit.) The team representing the Gramercy entities also includes Debevoise partner Mark Friedman, counsel Carl Micarelli, and associates Sarah Lee, Juan Fandiño, Isabelle Glimcher and Caroline Wallace as well as Robert Drain, Lisa Laukitis and Joseph Larkin of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, Michael Baratz and Emma Marshak of Steptoe, Theodore Kittila of Halloran Farkas + Kittila and Andrew Sauder of Dailey.