Notable Successes

John M. Desmarais

Law360 has named John Desmarais a 2023 MVP in the Trials category for securing a $272.5 million jury verdict (and $100 million in enhanced damages) for Ravgen against Labcorp and winning a complete defense verdict for Cisco against Egenera defeating $371 million in damages.
 
The jury trial wins came about two weeks apart in separate regions of the country. The plaintiff’s victory for Ravgen’s prenatal genetic testing technology took place in Waco, Texas, and the defense victory for Cisco eliminating infringement claims stemming from a virtual networking patent took place in Boston.
 
“The biggest challenge was to do them right in a row and not have a lot of time in between,” Desmarais told Law360. “You're going a hundred miles an hour with one set of facts and one set of issues, and then you've got sort of two weeks to purge your brain and then ramp up on another set of facts and another set of issues.”
 
Winning back-to-back trials – one on the plaintiff’s side and the other on the defense side – rarely occurs because patent litigators generally maintain a single focus because each side requires its own style and strategy, Desmarais told Law360.
 
“It's a very different skill set. One is, you've got to figure out what the motive [is], and the other is, you've got to think about what they're going to do to motivate, and you've got to try and be prepared for both,” Desmarais said. “It's a fun challenge, doing both.”
 
Desmarais also discussed how each patent litigation case is unique, often requiring an extensive depth of knowledge in the hard sciences to understand its nuances. He told Law360 that each case provides a fresh experience – whether it’s a networking, audio, or pharmaceutical patent – which keeps the work exciting.
 
“The great thing about being a patent trial lawyer is every case you get is a different technology and you get to learn the technology, you learn how things work, and if you're somebody like me who really likes science, but doesn't really want to be a scientist, you get to learn all this stuff,” Desmarais said.
 
Read the Law360 story
 

John M. Desmarais