you can hire a very very good patent litigator for $700 an hour. Some big names charge as much as $1000 but I know of no one who charges anything close to $2000. my rate as a fifth year associate at a 'top' firm varies a little by case and client but is generally around $500.
I was thinking that, and the $2k/hour does seem high on the estimate side, but consider how many people may have been on the case.
A colleague was telling me a story of using an area firm to collect a debt, and complained about the billing. Their attorneys were >$200/hour, and they'd often do 'status update' phone calls with more than one attorney on the line. My colleague just grimaced on these calls doing mental accounting of ... "well, that was a $600 call.... there was an $800 call, etc".
If there were, say, 3 people doing some work at... $250/hr, $600k can still go pretty fast (definitely less than 6 months of part time work).
