$235 Million Verdict of Willful Induced Infringement Overruled for Failure to Prove Causation

Following a jury verdict of willful induced infringement of plaintiffs' congestive heart failure treatment patent and damages of $235 million, the court granted defendant's renewed motion for judgment of noninfringement as a matter of law because substantial evidence did not support the jury's finding that defendant induced doctors to infringe. "⁠[Plaintiffs] failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that '⁠[defendant's] alleged inducement, as opposed to other factors, actually caused the physicians [i.e., as a class or even at least one of them] to directly infringe,' by prescribing generic carvedilol and to do so for the treatment of mild to severe CHF. Without proof of causation, which is an essential element of [plaintiffs'] action, a finding of inducement cannot stand. . . . [Defendant's] uncontroverted evidence of alternative factors that caused physicians to prescribe carvedilol in an infringing manner cannot be ignored. . . . [G]iven the dearth of evidence that doctors read and understand and are affected by labels, and given the vast amount of evidence that doctors' decisions to prescribe carvedilol during the relevant periods were influenced by multiple non-[defendant] factors -- such an inference was an unreasonable one for the jury to have drawn."

GlaxoSmithKline LLC et al v. Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc., 1-14-cv-00878 (DED March 28, 2018, Order) (Stark, USDJ)