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For years, he watches while other scientists allegedly take credit for his university research and drug maker Pfizer pockets billions in profits without sharing. Then the lawyers take charge, and he allows himself to dream.

A bottomless endowment. A building or hospital wing bearing his name. His own parking spot on campus.

But the lawsuit, a bold move for a modest school, also means the scientist's story finally will be told. It's a tale of trauma, heartbreak and, ultimately, resentment, an allegory, and it does not belong to Daniel Simmons of Brigham Young University.

Not yet.

Which is why Kerry O'Banion offers this take-it-from-me advice: "Hang it up. Go skiing."

"Back in the 1980s, in the Reagan years, we were told as academic institutions that we had some rights to our discoveries," says O'Banion, a University of Rochester researcher who lost a protracted legal fight with Pfizer. "But it's a lawyers' game, and unless you line up your ducks 50 deep you are going to get screwed."

O'Banion, like Simmons, made early discoveries that contributed to the development of COX-2 inhibitors, a new class of drugs that relieve pain and swelling without the side effects associated with aspirin. The most popular of these drugs are Pfizer's Celebrex and Merck's Vioxx, medications that, despite eventual revelations that they heighten heart-related health risks, were huge moneymakers.

BYU filed suit against Pfizer Wednesday in Utah's U.S. District Court, accusing the company of fraud and plunder, and of passing off Simmons' research as its own. Six years earlier, O'Banion and Rochester made similar claims.

Although BYU's suit involves breach of contract and Rochester's centered on patent infringement, both cases highlight the difficulty universities face in protecting intellectual property.

Universities must make investments long before they know if the technology is going to have any commercial value, says Ronald Cahill, a Boston patent attorney familiar with the Rochester suit.

"It's better for the university to develop a basic technology and license it to a company to do the development, but it's hard to know what will make money, and licensing officers don't always know because it's so early in the product's development," Cahill says.

Another complication: Professors are told to publish or perish, yet when they report their research, they can lose rights if the university hasn't taken steps to protect them.

"Universities have a lot of conflicting motivations when it comes to protecting their [intellectual property]," Cahill says.

That was certainly true for BYU which, according to its lawsuit, struck a deal with Monsanto, Pfizer's predecessor, to develop a drug to fight inflammation. Several scientists, including those at UCLA and Rochester, figured out that cyclooxygenase, an enzyme produced when swelling occurs, is not a single enzyme. Rochester went further and identified a cell line that could be used in testing drugs that inhibit production of the enzyme, then patented its research.

Simmons, however, was the first to publish a paper on his findings and is often credited with discovering the so-called COX-2 enzyme. While the school never patented Simmons' findings, the professor withheld certain proprietary information from his paper and used it to negotiate the deal with Pfizer.

Under the contract, Simmons would direct the research project and Pfizer would handle the patents. Instead, the lawsuit alleges, Pfizer used Simmons' research to test a compound patented by another scientist and, then, canceled its contract with BYU. The lawsuit claims the company and its chief scientific officer, Philip Needleman, embarked on an elaborate public relations campaign to convince the world that Needleman had discovered COX-2.

Years later, while serving as an expert witness in another patent infringement suit, Simmons learned that Pfizer had used his research to develop Celebrex and then duped him, according to the lawsuit. BYU spent the next seven years trying to get Pfizer to share the credit and profits from its blockbuster drug before filing its lawsuit.

It is only the second lawsuit filed by BYU in two decades, says school spokesman Michael Smart.

That makes sense to Cahill.

"Universities generally aren't in the business of litigation and essentially all of them prefer not to litigate," the Boston attorney says. "At the same token, they're investing in research . . . and if they let other people take their intellectual property for free then no one is going to license it from them."

Pfizer says it fulfilled the terms of its contract with BYU and that Simmons had nothing to do with the creation of Celebrex. Both parties insist they are prepared to spend whatever money and time it takes to prevail in court.

O'Banion's advice: Don't.

"It's a dead bog. I wouldn't touch it at all."

Lawyers dangle generational wealth and scientific fame in front of professors, he says, but they also put them in harm's way.

"Imagine a hotel suite with a very large table. On one side you have me and my lawyer, a stenographer, a couple of videographers - and 10 lawyers and 10 assistants on their side. Three, 10-hour days of questioning all designed to trip me up," O'Banion says. "It was like having sharp objects shoved under my fingernails."

The litigation, which went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, also cost O'Banion friendships and professional contacts who worked at Merck and Pfizer and related companies, he says. "It damaged my career. I really believe that."

And his ego.

"I made a contribution that led to a drug that helped a lot of people and to me that is very uplifting," O'Banion says. "At the same time, academics are still saying, 'You got screwed, you got screwed' and that is not fun to hear. And I still hear it.

"There is a loss that goes beyond economics."