Actually, that’s just one of more than 100 intriguing domain names registered by the health care giant for its birth-control patch. The others include patchdangers.com, patchsucks.org, deadlypatch.net and orthoevralies.net.

Why go to such trouble? By scooping up negative domain names, J&J tries to beat others to the punch, especially lawyers trolling for clients who claim thery were harmed by the product, which has been linked to clots. J&J is trying the same tactic as it defends charges of misleading ads for Splenda.

A spokesman for J&J’s Ortho-McNeil unit, which sells the patch, says that “the purchase of the domain names is a standard and accepted business practice for companies that are trying to prevent product disparagement and to safeguard the defendant’s reputation.”

Equally interesting is how all this became known - a NJ state court judge last week decided that a handful of documents weren’t subject to a confidentiality agreement in litigation between J&J and lawyers representing people who say they were hurt by the patch. The documents are largely internal J&J e-mails written in 2005 about purchasing domain names.

The agreement contains a provision for challenges to confidentiality, but this was the first time plaintiffs’ lawyers, who have filed 309 cases before NJ state court judge Bryan Garruto, have attempted to have documents “dedlassified.” J&J argued all of the hundreds of thousands of documents involved in the litigation are trade secrets, but Garruto rejected the argument.

This suggests that the plaintiffs’ lawyers will be emboldened to have still more documents freed from the protective order granting secrecy. One source familiar with the litigation says this should be “the beginning of declassifying.” If that happens, the curtain on OrthoEvra development and marketing may be pulled back.

Further reading…
Bloomberg News.

Pharmalot has the order and accompanying memo by Garruto and will make them available as soon as possible.

[tags]Johnson & Johnson, Ortho-Evra[/tags]