Gail J. Standish, Partner

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. 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, computer software and hardware, and pharmaceuticals. She has handled high-tech cases in both trials and arbitrations.

• Ms. Standish recently obtained summary judgment for Sun Pharmaceuticals, invalidating an Eli Lilly patent related to Gemzar®, permitting generic entry into the market for this blockbuster cancer drug some two and a half years early.
• Ms. Standish recently 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 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

Ms. Standish was selected as a Southern California Super Lawyer in the area of Intellectual Property Litigation for 2007, 2008, and 2009 by Law & Politics and the Los Angeles Magazine. She was named a Super Lawyer in the area of Securities Litigation in 2006. Ms. Standish was also named one of the Top 75 Women Litigators in California by the Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journal in September 2005.

Education

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).

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.