Independent, but not Trolling

Yesterday, radiologist Bruce Saffran won a $431 million patent suit against Boston Scientific (NYT, LawBlog).  The patent (5,653,760) claims porous sheets that control delivery of drugs to damaged tissue, and a Texas jury concluded that it covered Bo-Sci's taxus-coated cardiac stents.  Apparently, it's the sixth largest award in patent litigation history, and certainly one of the largest recent awards.  An interesting fact about Saffran is that he is a practicing physician and independent inventor (as far as I can tell).  He doesn't manufacture and sell stents or other devices related to his patent.  In the eyes of some, that makes Dr. Saffran a patent troll (see, e.g., Patent Troll Tracker -- who also posts the verdict form).  Dr. Saffran has lost no profit or sales from Bo-Sci's actions.   Indeed, the entire award is a "reasonable royalty" to compensate for the infringement.

Of course, Dr. Saffran is not a typical patent troll as that character has been portrayed in the media and literature.  He did not purchase his patent from another and he did not try to obtain an injunction against Bo-Sci (or a correspondingly out-sized award).  In fact, Dr. Saffran is the archetypal small, independent inventor that the U.S. patent system was intended to support.  I think most people would agree that we want the Dr. Saffrans of the world to have the incentive to keep inventing.   So, now that the patent reform effort finally seems to be making headway in Congress, it's important to consider how the proposed changes would impact inventors like Dr. Saffran as well as large corporations.  

Oh, and one other interesting note: a few publications, including WSJ's Law Blog, state that Dr. Saffran's case was handled on a contingency basis by DC law firm, Dickstein Shapiro.  That's significant not only because it stands to net D-S a huge fee, but also because contingency fees are extraordinarily rare in patent cases.  Maybe this case will pave the way for more in the future?