A Patent Lie Read Online Free PDF

squarely at Seeley. “Bob never missed an angle that mattered.”
    “I'm not saying he did. He may have been planning to depose her when he died.” Seeley didn't mind that Palmieri idolized his mentor; he admired loyalty. But if they were going to work together, the young partner would have to calm down. “Did Pearsall seem any different before he died? Had he changed?”
    Palmieri drew back. “You mean, what happened that he would throw himself in front of a train?” He started to answer his own question, but changed his mind. “Bob was as passionate about this case as he was about all his cases.”
    That told Seeley nothing. What looks like passion can in fact be nothing more than a driving fear of failure. In his last years in New York, even as he was winning most of his cases and favorably settling the others, Seeley could never shake the conviction that he had failed his clients by not obtaining a larger damage award or more generous settlement terms.
    “Maybe Warren isn't a problem,” Seeley said, “but I want to nail this down. If there's someone out there with a halfway legitimate claim that he—or she—made this invention before Steinhardt did, I need to know it before I put him on the stand. I'm seeing him this afternoon, but I want you to go through his lab notes and mark anything that could raise a question.”
    Again Palmieri reddened, and this time Seeley caught the meaning at once.
    “This is too important for an associate. If it weren't important I wouldn't ask you to do it. I'll look at whatever you come up with tomorrow morning.”
    Palmieri pushed back to leave.
    “Look, Chris, when Vaxtek asked me to take this case, I told them they should let the second chair run it, but they wouldn't listen.”
    “What did they say?”
    “That you didn't have enough experience.”
    “And you believe that?”
    “It wasn't my decision to make.” Seeley remembered the missing trial notebook. “Did you get a look at Pearsall's trial notes?”
    Palmieri said, “Look, Mr. Seeley—”
    “The people I work with call me Mike. What about the notebook?”
    “He didn't keep one.”
    “You're sure of that.”
    “I worked for Bob from the day I started here. Eleven years. He never kept a trial notebook. Maybe it's something New York lawyers do.”
    Seeley was growing tired of the barbs. “Did he talk to you about his theory of the case?”
    “Sure. Except he didn't call it that. For him it was the ‘path to victory. ’ We worked it out together.”
    “And what does it look like—Vaxtek's path to victory?”
    “Nothing that would surprise you: Vaxtek's a small American company that has nothing going for it except the brilliance, creativity, and dedication of its handful of scientists and the protection of the American patent system. St. Gall is a multinational octopus that knows nothing about science, lacks any creative aptitude or spirit, and survives by poaching on the hard work of small companies like Vaxtek.”
    “And what's Emil Thorpe's ‘path to victory’ going to be?” Thorpe, St. Gall's lead trial counsel, was a legend of the San Francisco trial bar and, for major cases like this one, was at or near the top of the list of preferred counsel for any company that could afford him. Seeley guessed that Vaxtek would have hired Thorpe if St. Gall didn't already have him on retainer.
    “Bob and I never got the chance to talk about it.” Palmieri was at the conference-room door, looking down the corridor.
    Seeley wondered if he was like this with everyone, or reserved his detachment for interlopers.
    “You're running this case,” Palmieri said, “so you get to choose your second chair. If you want to work with someone else, that's fine with me. I'll do everything I can to support him.”
    Seeley had reservations about Palmieri, but he knew that if he hesitated for a moment he would lose him. “You're the one I want sitting next to me at counsel's table.”
    “Thanks”—Palmieri turned back