The short version was that some company's legal team was looking to hire him for expert witnessing. They knew who he was, and had a rough idea of his opinion already, and knew that he was more or less opposed to their position. So he asked them why they'd be willing to pay $?!?/hr for him to read stuff and tell them that he thought they were wrong.

They basically told him "if paying you $?!?!? allows us some insight into the opposition's potential strategy that lets us file a motion that just delays a ruling from morning until after noon recess, that will recoup all the costs we pay you". And apparently they weren't even exaggerating because in half a day they pulled over an order of magnitude more than $?!?!? in sales.

Evidently this sort of paying experts who disagree with you to help form your case strategy is just a normal thing, and it makes sense to me, I just couldn't fathom the numbers at the time. The amount of money specifically in drug patent cases is staggering. There is a long, long list of drugs that pull in over a billion dollars a year in sales.

The US's total (legal) drug market is like half a trillion dollars.