Pharmaceuticals – patent & trade mark attorneys

Our pharmaceuticals patent & trade mark attorney team is one of the leading practices in the sector, and our clients include some of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies. We have developed strong relationships with our clients and in-depth knowledge of their products and intellectual property portfolios.

We often work directly with in-house counsel and scientists to identify, protect and defend valuable intellectual property rights in Europe and elsewhere.

Pharmaceutical technical expertise – therapeutics, vaccines, gene therapy & stem cell patents

Our technical expertise is unparalleled and our clients come to us knowing that we ‘get the job done’. Most of the members of our team have advanced academic degrees, including PhDs, and many have direct industry experience, which our clients truly value.

We draft, prosecute and defend cases directed on a range of different technologies, including new chemical entities, peptide and antibody therapeutics, gene therapy, vaccines, stem cell technology, pharmaceutical formulations, drug delivery systems, polymorphs, salts, new medical uses, dosage regimes, and process chemistry.

We handle cases in the clinical fields of oncology, neuroscience, immunology, inflammatory diseases, infectious diseases and many others.

Pharmaceutical intellectual property expertise

Our pharmaceuticals team has expertise in all areas of intellectual property, including patent drafting and prosecution; patent opposition and appeal proceedings; supplementary protection certificates (SPCs) and patent term extensions; patent and SPC litigation; regulatory issues; freedom to operate opinions; due diligence exercises; and transactional matters. The firm is also experienced in handling trade mark, copyright and design matters on behalf of clients in the pharmaceutical sector.

European pharmaceutical IP law & patent litigation

Notably, we have one of the leading opposition and appeal practices before the European Patent Office. We have an impressive success rate and are frequently retained by pharmaceutical innovator companies to defend their European patents directed to key pharmaceutical products. Often, our work in Europe is in the context of international patent litigation and we are skilled in coordinating and working with litigators in Europe and other jurisdictions, including the US, Japan and Canada.

Patent examples

Examples of pharmaceutical patent defences handled by our firm include defences of patents directed to the following products: adalimumab (Humira®), bortezomib (Velcade®), cabozantinib (Cabometyx®), desloratidine (Clarinex®), eculizumab (Soliris®), eliglustat (Cerdelga®), fosamprevanir (Telzir®), interferon beta (Avonex®), ixazomib (Ninlaro®), linaclotide (Constella®), lomitapide (Lojuxta®), recombinant factor VIII (Eloctate®), recombinant factor IX (Alprolix®), temozolomide (Temodar®), and trastuzumab emtansine (Kadcyla®).

Medicine regulations experience

Our team is also very experienced in SPCs and the associated regulatory protection afforded to medicinal products. We retain some of the brightest and most creative minds in the business, and we devise innovative strategies which take account of the uncertainty surrounding SPC law and the interplay between SPCs and regulatory protection. It is for these reasons that we are frequently approached by pharmaceutical companies to devise their SPC strategy and coordinate the filing of their SPC applications across Europe.