My Seven Years of Silence: The untold story of Prometheus Laboratories vs. me and the controversial Supreme Court decision

In My Seven Years of Silence, Rokea el-Azhary provides a witness’s eye-view of one of the most famous patent cases in U.S. history. Her book is a needed and valuable account of how patents—and lawsuits to enforce them—affect those in the medical profession. An engaging read!

—Jonathan Singer, a renowned life sciences industry leader and decorated trial attorney

In April 2005, Dr. Rokea el-Azhary—a dermatologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota—received a phone call from their in-house attorney. He informed her that she and Mayo were being sued by Prometheus, a specialty pharmaceutical company. Prometheus was claiming that Rokea’s research had infringed on their patents. Thus began a series of court decisions and appeals that ended in 2012 with the Supreme Court voting unanimously in Rokea’s favor. Rokea looks back on those years, from 2005 to 2012, as the most stressful chapter of her personal and professional life. She was uncertain of the outcome and weathered one storm after another.

My Seven Years of Silence is the untold story behind a courageous doctor and a world-famous clinic as they fought to ensure that corporations cannot overreach their profit goals at the expense of human knowledge.