LSIPR 50 2017: Larry Coury—The art of successful litigation

Larry Coury says his biggest achievement is building a talented litigation group at biotechnology company Regeneron. But this is not all he’s achieved during his time at the New York-headquartered business.

When he took up the post of director of dispute resolution in 2014, Coury was the first litigation attorney at Regeneron.

Now, the team includes three attorneys and two paralegals, with Coury serving as senior director of dispute resolution.

Although the bulk of Coury’s work concerns patent litigation and disputes, he also oversees corporate governance litigation, contract disputes, employment disputes, product liability issues, personal injury cases, and any other disputes that have the potential to result in litigation.

IP is the foundation on which Regeneron and the biotechnology industry is built, and advancements in technology require an enormous investment of time and money, he explains.

Consequently, it’s not surprising that companies want to retain or monetise the investments and competitive advantages they have obtained through the development of new technologies.

“Disputes arise frequently over the ownership of these technologies, so it is essential that the people involved in dispute resolution have a thorough understanding of the technology and associated IP when trying to resolve these disputes,” he says.

At the heart of Coury’s role: the resolution of technologically complex disputes.

Biotechnology has been Coury’s passion since college and throughout graduate school. Like many other lawyers in the biotechnology industry, he began his career as a scientist and later chose to pursue a legal path.

“The underlying science and technology always fascinate us and hold our attention, so it is an easy choice to join a science-driven company like Regeneron,” he says.

Coury’s inspiration was his post-doctoral advisor, Mark Zeidel.

Zeidel, who is now chief of the medicine department at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School, was a “great inspiration and scientific mentor” to Coury.

After Coury made the transition to law, Jim Haley, now senior counsel at Ropes & Gray, was his mentor in the field of biotechnology patent law.

Coury’s career path as a biotechnology lawyer was circuitous—scientists had virtually no interaction or experience with the lawyers, and lawyers had virtually no interaction or experience with scientists.

Because of this, he says, he had to find his own way, so he advises finding a mentor early in your career.

Understanding the technology

Trying to litigate complex biotechnology cases can be challenging when the finders of fact are lay juries and judges who might lack any background or training in science generally, and biotechnology specifically.

“We have had some unfortunate patent decisions at the district court level attributable, in part, to misunderstandings of the company’s technology by judges and juries,” Coury recalls.

It’s a high priority for Regeneron to reverse these decisions at the appellate level (the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit), where the judges are more experienced with patent law and scientific issues.

“Because of the limited time for oral argument on appeal, however, it is vital to find and retain highly experienced appellate counsel who are capable of identifying the key issues and explaining their importance in an appellate setting,” says Coury.

Regeneron has identified and retained some of the best appellate teams in the country to represent the company, he adds.

“Our biggest challenges come in patent litigation cases because we have to explain complex biotechnology to judges and juries who lack technical backgrounds,” he says.

Unlike other technologies, such as consumer electronics, biotechnology inventions usually reflect discoveries on a microscopic or atomic level, so it’s not possible to show the inventions to judges and juries.

On top of that, these fact-finders have almost no personal experience with biotechnology so they lack the references that could help them understand the technology.

“Additionally, I believe biotechnology is inherently more complex—Regeneron now requires all our in-house attorneys and agents to have a PhD and training in a relevant scientific area, for example—so the concepts are difficult to understand at even a basic level, and we have seen judges and juries struggle with the concepts,” he says.

Coury and his team regularly interact with the scientific and medical staff at Regeneron to develop demonstrative tools, analogies, and exhibits that will assist in explaining the technology in a courtroom.

Regeneron works with graphics consultants who have experience with patent litigation and who have developed teaching tools for judges and juries in complex technological cases.

Regeneron also works with jury consultants to develop mock exercises that allow the company to test its analogies, arguments and exhibits, in order to determine which tools most effectively assist the fact-finders to understand the technology.

Leading the crowd

Regeneron is currently in the process of converting all its historical documents into a common electronic format that is indexed and searchable.

It is also instituting a comprehensive programme for documenting and retaining data, complete with a data-mapping project.

Coury’s plans for the future include establishing Regeneron as a policy leader in biotechnology law, following Regeneron’s founders’ pledge to keep the company science-driven with the highest ethical standards.

Regeneron’s scientists and management spent many years developing technology platforms that provided a new way to discover drugs and, notwithstanding some setbacks along the way, Regeneron is now reaping the benefits from this enormous investment in technology.

“I believe Regeneron will build on its reputation as a leader in innovation, ethics and patient care, and could very well be recognised as the world’s leading biotechnology company within the next two years,” says Coury.