Fun with patent law. No ... really

Any time I hear a business executive say "It's not about the money," I automatically check my back pocket to make sure my wallet is still aboard.

But when Alan Carlson insists that the reason he started his own law firm was "more about challenges and having fun," I tend to believe him.

Carlson, 64, is a veteran trial lawyer who specializes in what I once regarded as a tedious, sleep-inducing corner of corporate law: patents, trademarks and copyrights.

Tedious, that is, until I met Carlson, who has had a briefcase-full of fun with a collection of downright fascinating legal battles that I began highlighting for you a dozen years ago.

Included is the case that relieved Deere & Co. of the illusion that it owned the color green, another that won a $24 million judgment in a case involving patents on a block of concrete and a third that ended when a gent was arrested as he was packing to flee the country with 44 gigabytes of a Carlson client's proprietary data.

It might all be about the fun, but the money has nonetheless been piling up into comfortably tall stacks since Carlson and three younger colleagues left the Minneapolis intellectual property firm of Merchant & Gould in 2003 to start their own practice.

In the past two years, never mind the slumping economy, the firm of Carlson, Caspers, Vandenburgh & Lindquist has hoisted its annual gross by more than 50 percent -- from $8.8 million in 2007 to $12.8 million in '08 to a projected $13.5 million this year.

Carlson's partners include Phil Caspers, 48; Derek Vandenburgh, 45, and Tim Lindquist, 42, all of whom left Merchant, Gould to start a firm that focuses almost entirely on the fun stuff -- litigation.

"We're a boutique within a boutique," said Carlson, the firm's president and CEO. Translation: Carlson, Caspers does little of the prosaic work of obtaining and registering clients' patents, a staple for many firms in the patent law niche.

You can't blame them, given some of their captivating cases, many of the David-vs.-Goliath variety.

Which brings us to the matter of Spectralytics Inc. vs. Cordis Corp., a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, and Norman Noble Inc., a Cordis supplier.

Spectralytics is a small-town company with a big product, a patented process for making the intricate designs cut into an aortal stent more precisely. Several years ago, the Dassel, Minn., firm received an acquisition proposal from Noble, which apparently was interested in offering the design to Cordis.

According to the Spectralytics complaint, after several Noble executives visited the Dassel facility, negotiations ended abruptly. Subsequently, a Spectralytics owner saw a public television show about stent manufacturing that featured a machine that closely resembled his own technology.

A Carlson, Caspers investigation led to a lawsuit in which Cordis and Noble challenged the validity of the Spectralytics patent while denying infringement. In February, a jury awarded Spectralytics $22.35 million, a judgment now before the U. S. Court of Appeals.

Another blockbuster case

This was but one of two recent $20 million-plus wins for the Minneapolis firm. The other involved Minneapolis-based Anchor Wall Systems, which had designed and patented several concrete blocks with strategically placed lips and bumps designed to align the blocks and hold them in place.

"Nobody thought you could patent a block of concrete," Carlson said, apparently including Rockwood Retaining Wall Systems of Rochester, Minn., which began using the design in the late 1990s.

A lengthy lawsuit filed against Rockwood ended last year when a jury awarded Anchor $24.2 million. Anchor subsequently settled for a lesser amount to avoid a lengthy appeal process.

"It was a difficult case, involving several patents," said Anchor president Doug Strawbridge. "But Alan [Carlson] is a special breed when it comes to making a complex case to the jury. I don't know a patent attorney anywhere who can hold a candle to him."

Sometimes he needs a little help, however. After a chemist for Minneapolis coatings manufacturer Valspar Corp. resigned without explanation, a check of his computer showed he'd downloaded 44 gigabytes of proprietary formulas.

Carlson's solution was short and simple: He advised the company to call the FBI, which learned the gent had bought an airline ticket to China and arrested him at his home as he was getting ready to leave.

"The FBI," Carlson explained, "has better resources than we do."

But none of this comes close to my favorite Carlson coup, involving Farmhand Inc., an Excelsior manufacturer of front-end loaders and other implements. Having discerned that our color-conscious farmers desired front-end loaders that matched the color of their tractors, Farmhand started painting some of theirs green to match John Deere machines.

That, of course, cut into sales of front-end loaders offered by Deere, which promptly sued, charging a trade dress violation. It took a lengthy trial-and-appeal process, but Carlson convinced several courts that Deere didn't own the color green and that Farmhand had a perfect right to satisfy finicky farmers' aesthetic tastes.

Besides, as I pointed out more than a decade ago, everyone knows that Edina High School owns the color green.

Dick Youngblood • 612-673-4439 • yblood@startribune.com