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Gail Standish is a partner in the firm’s Los Angeles office who concentrates her practice in the areas of patent, securities, and complex commercial litigation. She has first-chaired federal jury trials since 1997.
Ms. Standish served for four years as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California. In this capacity, she investigated and prosecuted large-scale drug trafficking and money laundering organizations, and tried cases involving fraud in addition to those charging narcotics-related violations. She also argued criminal cases before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Ms. Standish holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a member of the patent bar. Her graduate studies combined biomedical and aerospace engineering in MIT’s Man-Vehicle Lab, where she worked on experiments that flew on Space Shuttle mission SLS-1. From 1985 to 1988, Ms. Standish served as an officer and F-16 flight test engineer for the U.S. Air Force. After law school, Ms. Standish served as a law clerk to the Honorable William J. Rea, U.S. District Court, Central District of California.
Ms. Standish’s patent litigation experience covers a wide variety of technologies, including cases involving medical products and devices, surgical methods, biotechnology, computer software and hardware, and pharmaceuticals. She has handled high-tech cases in trials, arbitrations, and before the International Trade Commission.
- Ms. Standish recently second-chaired a four week jury trial in the highly publicized case of Monsanto Co. v. E.I. duPont de Nemours & Co., obtaining a billion dollar verdict for client Monsanto. The verdict – dubbed “remarkable” by The American Lawyer – was reported to be the fifth-largest patent verdict in history. The patent at issue involved Monsanto’s Roundup Ready technology, which farmers worldwide use to make their crops herbicide resistant.
- Ms. Standish argued and won summary judgment for Sun Pharmaceuticals, invalidating an Eli Lilly patent for Gemzar® based on “double patenting.” Lilly challenged the district court’s decision, but Sun prevailed on appeal, and again when Lilly sought rehearing en banc in the Federal Circuit. Given the impact of the decision on its multi-billion dollar monopoly, Lilly filed a petition for writ of certiorari in the United States Supreme Court, which was denied.
- Following the invalidation of the Gemzar® patent, clearing the way for FDA approval and generic launch in the United States, Eli Lilly filed a complaint with the International Trade Commission against Winston client Hospira, Hospira’s foreign supplier, and others. Standish spearheaded the Hospira-related entities’ defense, and forced Eli Lilly to dismiss the ITC proceeding and pending foreign litigation, with prejudice, without any payment by Hospira or its suppliers.
- Ms. Standish won a series of victories in four different courts— including district courts in New Jersey and D.C. and the Courts of Appeal of both the Federal and D.C. Circuits—for Hospira, Inc. that permitted Hospira to get its generic version of the $1.9 billion-per-year cancer drug Eloxatin® to market ahead of nearly a dozen other generic competitors.
- Ms. Standish led a team of lawyers in a case brought on behalf of Cross Medical Products (a division of Biomet, Inc.) in the Central District of California asserting breach of a patent license agreement related to pedicle screws used in spinal implant surgery. Defendant Alphatec asserted counterclaims for invalidity and non-infringement of the two Cross Medical patents that it had licensed in 2003. The Winston team won summary adjudication of liability and disposed of Alphatec’s counterclaims through additional motion practice, after which the case settled with Alphatec agreeing to pay 18 million dollars to Cross Medical.
- Ms. Standish was part of the trial team that obtained, after four weeks of trial, complete capitulation by the defendant—including stipulation to an injunction—in a technical trade secrets case involving chemical formulations.
- Ms. Standish won summary judgment for the patent holder, Ethicon-EndoSurgery, in a medical device case.
- Ms. Standish co-led the team that convinced patent holder Eli Lilly to walk away from a case Lilly had litigated vigorously for more than a year, clearing the way for Barr Pharmaceuticals to launch a generic version of Lilly’s product Weekly Prozac®.
- Ms. Standish led the team that obtained dismissal, with prejudice, of one patent, and invalidated the remaining patent, in a case involving a challenge to home improvement giant Lowe’s Web site in which the plaintiffs demanded tens of millions of dollars and a running royalty on all Web-based product sales. Ms. Standish also obtained sanctions against the plaintiffs and their counsel for discovery misconduct.
Ms. Standish has also represented clients in other intellectual property disputes, including Lanham Act false advertising, copyright, trade secret, and unfair business practices litigation.
Ms. Standish’s securities experience includes cases involving fraud, mergers and acquisitions, and breach of fiduciary duty claims. She was the lead securities lawyer on the team that obtained a dismissal with prejudice of a shareholder derivative suit alleging claims for breach of fiduciary filed in the District of New Jersey, Kanter v. Barella, 388 F.Supp. 2d 474 (D.N.J. 2005), a decision that was upheld on appeal by the Third Circuit, at 439 F.3d 170 (2007). She has successfully resolved matters for clients being investigated by the Department of Justice and the SEC.
Ms. Standish’s merger litigation experience includes representation of companies, special committees, and individual officers and directors in both federal and state courts. In 2004, Ms. Standish secured the quick and favorable resolution of challenges to a multi-billion dollar transaction, clearing the way for consummation of one of the largest deals to date in the health care industry.
Honors and Awards
In 2013, Ms. Standish was named one of the 75 “Top IP Litigators” in California by the Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journal; she previously received this recognition in 2010 and 2011. Ms. Standish was recognized in 2012 by the Los Angeles Business Journal in the “Who’s Who in L.A. Law: Angelenos to Know in Intellectual Property Law” report and in the IAM 1000 “World’s Leading Patent Practitioners” as “a commercially gifted, accurate, and effective litigator.” She was also recognized by the national publication Benchmark Litigation as a “future star” in 2011. In 2010 the Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journal also named Ms. Standish as one of the 100 “Top Woman Litigators” in the state, an award she also won in 2005 when the list included the Top 75 Women Litigators. Ms. Standish has been selected as a Southern California Super Lawyer in the area of Intellectual Property Litigation each year from 2007 through 2013 by Law & Politics and the Los Angeles Magazine, and earned that same recognition as a top securities litigator in 2006.
Education
Ms. Standish received a B.S. in 1985 and an M.S. in 1990, both in Aeronautics and Astronautics, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She received a J.D. from UCLA School of Law in 1993, where she was articles editor of the UCLA Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif.
Speeches and Publications
Ms. Standish was a contributing author to TechnoLawyer’s IP Memes (2002-2004). She is co-author of “When Secrets Walk: Reining in ‘Threatened Misappropriation’” published in The Intellectual Property Strategist (Vol 2., No. 5, May 1996) and “Educating the Judge and Jury in a Technical Trade Secret Case: The Plaintiff’s Perspective” published in The Intellectual Property Strategist (Vol. 2, No. 5, February 1996).
Ms. Standish recently appeared on a panel addressing the cost of patent litigation, with particular focus on cases involving non-practicing entities, for PLI’s annual Patent Litigation conference (also Webcast) in San Francisco. Ms. Standish was interviewed for and quoted in an article on pharmaceutical patent litigation entitled "Patent Prescriptions" in the August 2010 issue of California Lawyer. An interview with Ms. Standish entitled, “The Timing of Stock Options Issue: A Legal Challenge for Companies and Much More,” appeared in The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel, Vol. 14, No. 9 (September 2006). Ms. Standish was also an invited panel speaker on the issue of options backdating for a 2006 Associate of Corporate Counsel Webcast.
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