Phillips, Goldman, McLaughlin & Hall

Firm overview. Phillips, Goldman, McLaughlin & Hall, P.A. (also styled Phillips, McLaughlin & Hall in some filings; formerly Phillips, Goldman & Spence) is a small, regional Delaware civil litigation boutique headquartered at 1200 N. Broom Street, Wilmington, DE, with a secondary office in Media, PA. Based on court filings and bar-directory listings, the firm is roughly a half-dozen to a dozen attorneys and is best characterized as a Wilmington litigation shop, not a BigLaw or AmLaw-ranked firm; I found no Chambers or AmLaw ranking for it, and its publicly listed practice areas skew to general civil litigation, insurance defense, product liability, and torts.

IP litigation specialty. The firm's patent work is concentrated in one niche: serving as Delaware local counsel in pharmaceutical and life-sciences patent litigation in the District of Delaware, overwhelmingly Hatch-Waxman/ANDA cases. The tracked matter — Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp. v. Handa Neuroscience, LLC — fits that pattern, as do the firm's appearances in Tris Pharma v. Actavis Labs, Acorda Therapeutics v. Roxane/Alkem, Genentech v. Apotex, Pfizer v. Apotex, Astellas v. Zydus, Pharmacyclics v. Cipla, Boehringer Ingelheim v. Sun Pharma, Endo v. Impax, Galderma v. Perrigo, and Novartis v. Noven. Docket entries show the firm handling pleadings, Markman and post-trial briefing, and trial work as Delaware counsel alongside out-of-state lead counsel. It has also appeared in non-pharma IP matters such as Sound View Innovations v. AMC/CBS (streaming/video patents) and Miltenyi Biotec v. RWD Life Science (biotech instrumentation).

Side preference. The firm is distinctly defendant-side in its tracked patent practice — 0 plaintiff appearances, 1 defendant appearance — and in its broader Delaware docket it almost always appears for accused infringers, typically generic drug manufacturers (Apotex, Actavis, Sun Pharma, Cipla, Zydus, Perrigo, Impax, Roxane, Handa) defending ANDA suits brought by branded pharma. The one caveat: a 2016 letter in the Sound View Innovations cases appears to have been filed on the NPE-plaintiff side, and an industry blog lists the firm among local counsel used by communications-patent NPEs in Canada; both are thin sourcing, so I would not describe NPE prosecution as a core practice.

Notable cases or outcomes. The most prominent tracked matter is Novartis v. Handa Neuroscience. Publicly verifiable highlights include Tris Pharma v. Actavis/Allergan (Quillivant XR®), where the firm's client took the case through a bench trial, a Federal Circuit appeal (Tris II, 755 F. App'x 984) and remand; and Acorda v. Roxane (Ampyra®), where the firm filed the defendants' post-trial findings and briefs. I could not verify any headline plaintiff verdict or reported Federal Circuit merits decision naming the firm as counsel beyond these docket records, and would not claim one.

PTAB/IPR practice and key partners. I found no reliable evidence of a notable IPR/PGR filing or defense practice; the firm's role in the cases reviewed is district-court local counsel, with inter partes review handled by lead counsel. The IP practice leaders are John C. Phillips, Jr. (lead Delaware counsel in nearly all the firm's patent cases, a Delaware bar veteran since the 1970s and former assistant legal counsel to the Governor of Delaware), David A. Bilson (frequent co-counsel on ANDA dockets), and Megan C. Haney, with Robert S. Goldman and Lisa C. McLaughlin also named partners on the firm's letterhead.