Paul Goldstein - A Patent Lie

The last time Michael Seeley saw his brother it was in a hotel kitchen in San Francisco and Leonard was arguing with the hotel's catering manager over the bill for his wedding reception. Workers were cleaning up and the pulsing bass from the dance band in the next room echoed over the clatter of silverware. Seeley had to catch the red-eye back to New York City, but the caterer was implacable and Leonard wouldn't let up, even when Seeley signaled that he was going to leave. Only after Seeley started out the door did Leonard stop, flinging his arms open to pull him into an awkward embrace.

“Let's stop being strangers, Mike.” Leonard's breath tickled his ear.

Seeley broke away without answering. He loved his younger brother in the sense that he cared about his well-being, but he neither liked nor trusted him.

In the nine years since the wedding Leonard had called three or four times and sent his annual Christmas card. There was a printed announcement when he moved his medical practice from Palo Alto to San Francisco, and another last year when he took a job as chief medical officer at a biotech company in South San Francisco.

The announcement, mailed to Seeley in Manhattan, caught up with him in Buffalo, where he had moved his law practice. His first job out of law school had been in Buffalo. However, this time he was practicing not in the city's largest firm but by himself, and not in a steel-and-glass office tower but in a small office in the Ellicott Square Building, an ancient pile of bricks in the center of the city's half-deserted downtown.

Seeley's feet were up on a corner of his desk. Behind him, the single window looked out onto Swan Street, four stories below. His large shoulders hunched forward as if he was trying to warm himself against the chill scene outside. Rudy, the building's boiler man, was maneuvering a giant wrench beneath the decrepit steam radiator by the door and offering his views on whether the radiator was the oldest in western New York or in the Western world when a movement of yellow and gold flashed by the open door.

Seconds later, Seeley's part-time receptionist leaned into the office. “Someone to see you.” There was an unfamiliar thrill in Mrs. Rosziak's voice, as if the visitor were a celebrity, or at least a client more prosperous than the ones who usually came to the office. “ From California. ” She underlined the words. “Your brother.”

It was Leonard's sandy hair and the lemon V-neck under a brass-buttoned blazer that created the impression of yellow and gold. The wariness in Leonard's eyes when he came into the room didn't match the broad smile and outstretched arms. His arms dropped when he saw Seeley's frown. Leonard transferred a thick manila envelope to his left hand and reached the other across the desk. Seeley's single thought as he took his brother's hand was how quickly he could get him out of the office. He had already planned his day: reviewing client files, preparing for two court appearances in the early afternoon, visiting a jailed client who had been unable to make bail.

Rudy packed his toolbox and, going through the door, saluted Seeley with a promise that the radiator would be fine for at least another century. Seeley gestured for Leonard to take the client's chair across from him.

“It's nice to see you, Len, but I'm busy, and if you flew out here to pitch your case, you wasted your time.”

“I left a message with your girl that I was coming.”

The thought of Mrs. Rosziak being called a girl amused Seeley, but not enough to make him smile. “She told me.”

Leonard had been leaving messages with Mrs. Rosziak for a week. His company, Vaxtek, had filed a lawsuit against St. Gall, the giant Swiss drug producer, for infringing the patent on Vaxtek's entry in the race for an AIDS vaccine. With the trial three weeks away, Vaxtek's lead lawyer suddenly died. Seeley understood that the company's future depended on winning the lawsuit, but he also knew that any one of hundreds of lawyers could try the case. Leonard was looking for something more.

“Why didn't you call back?”

“I didn't want to encourage you.”

“Always looking out for your little brother.” Leonard smiled around the words. “Still the college quarterback. A little thinner, maybe, but still a full head of hair.” He patted the top of his own head where, Seeley guessed, the hair had been carefully barbered to hide a bald spot. The color, though Leonard's as a boy, now surely came from a bottle.

Leonard's eyes moved around the office, taking in the metal bookshelf stuffed with a worn, black-bound set of McKinney's New York Code, the half-dozen vintage prints of the Buffalo harbor that leaned against the bottom shelf waiting to be hung, two ancient file cabinets, and the window with its gray outlook.

Leonard was perspiring. Was he wearing a great deal of gold, or did it just seem that way? It struck Seeley that the charm on which Leonard survived as a boy had lost some of its polish.

“This is your kind of case, Mike. Little guy takes on big guy. David against Goliath. You get to be David's lawyer.” “

Your little guy is a publicly held corporation. I don't represent corporations anymore. I sue them.”

Leonard said, “In a single day, St. Gall makes more off its cure for erectile dysfunction than we make on all of our products in a year. They're a thousand times our size. In broad daylight they steal our biggest patent, and do you know what they say? I'm at a conference in Miami, giving a presentation, and when I finish, St. Gall's vice president for research-an MD, the guy with the same job as me-comes up and says, ‘We're going to crush you. ’That's it. He doesn't say hello, or I slept through your speech, or your patent's no good. Just, ‘We're going to crush you. ’Then he walks away.”

Across the room, the radiator banged as if it had been struck by a hammer. The hiss of steam that followed had a rusty, boiled smell.

“You could take them down, Mike. I followed every one of your cases when you were in New York.” He patted the hidden bald spot again. “You didn't know I did that, did you? I took subscriptions to a couple of legal newspapers just so I could keep track.”

That wasn't the kind of thing Leonard would do.

“I clipped out the stories and gave them to Mom.”

“That's the past, Len. I don't do that kind of case anymore.” His brother's persistence was making Seeley repeat himself, and he resented it.

“I went out on a limb for you. I had to sell you to our general counsel, and then the two of us sold you to our chairman. He's counting on you.”

“Then he's going to be disappointed.”

“I thought that if I could make you understand how important this is to me, you'd take it.”

Leonard removed a handkerchief from an inside pocket of his jacket and wiped his forehead. When he unbuttoned the jacket, Seeley saw that he had put on weight since the wedding nine years ago. Seeley felt a moment's sadness for Leonard and for his brother's dream of repairing a family that was broken from the start.

Seeley said, “I never saw you as a corporate type. I pictured you in a white coat, healing the sick.”

“Or telling them they're going to die. I spent four years doing that. Half my patients in San Francisco were HIV positive. The other half already had AIDS. It's why I took the job at Vaxtek. What we have is as close as anyone's come to a real AIDS vaccine. Do you know how many lives this is going to save when we get our FDA approval? Here. Africa. Around the world. How many lawyers get the chance to defend a patent like this?”

“How did he die?” If he changed the subject, Seeley thought, Leonard might give up and leave. “The lawyer who was trying the case.”