Life Sciences Patents, Trademarks, and Trade Secrets

Our goal is to help you protect your innovations and capitalize on the value of your IP in a competitive marketplace. As such, we advise on legal issues across most areas of our clients' businesses, using an integrated staffing approach to deliver exceptional service cost-effectively. Client teams are staffed with the client and their needs in mind. While seasoned attorneys oversee all teams, they also include associates, patent agents, technical advisors, and paralegals, all of whom have industry experience. A deep bench of IP professionals with life sciences knowledge ensures that our team is familiar with complex IP in an array of technical areas, including:

• Pharmaceuticals, small molecules, and biologics
• Diagnostics, medical devices, and surgical tools
• Imaging and testing equipment
• Compositions and formulations, manufacturing processes, and methods of treatment

Patent Prosecution and Portfolio Strategy

Our patent prosecutors focus on building global patent portfolios to create strategic market advantage. The team comprises experienced patent professionals with advanced scientific degrees, including doctoral degrees in pharmacology, chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology, immunology, and neuroscience. Several of our team members have prior experience working at pharmaceutical and biotech companies as in-house counsel or scientists. Several others are former patent examiners with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). In addition, our patent professionals regularly collaborate with our intellectual property litigators to ensure that the attorney-client privilege is protected during prosecution and that, when a patent issues, it is in the best possible position to withstand any challenge.

Patent Litigation

We handle complex intellectual property cases in courts nationwide and in “IP hotbeds,” such as the District of Delaware, the Eastern and Western Districts of Texas, and the Northern District of California. Our team includes trial-tested litigators, many of whom have first-chair experience in high-profile cases. Our litigators have deep experience in the life sciences space and have litigated composition, method of treatment, and medical device patents in various jurisdictions, including:

• Federal district and appellate courts
• State Courts
• U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
• United States Supreme Court
• U.S. Court of Federal Claims
• USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB)
• Trademark Trial and Appeals Board (TTAB)
• U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC)

To work more efficiently, we have in-house teams that offer litigation support services, including e-discovery and document management, trial graphics, and on-site trial support.

Core Patent Services

• Patent prosecution (both US and foreign) 
• IP counseling, including freedom-to-operate, invalidity, and infringement analyses 
• Life cycle management strategy 
• Advanced prosecution activities, including inter partes reviews, reexaminations, reissues, interferences, and European opposition proceedings 
• Due diligence related to licensing or M&A transactions 
• Patent portfolio audits/pre-litigation diligence 
• Complex IP-related transactions, commercial transactions, and joint ventures

Our trademark professionals are based throughout the U.S. and the U.K. and work with trusted foreign associates who have experience managing trademark filings and registrations in 150 countries. Our trademark clients include pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical device, diagnostics, and digital health companies. We advise on the full product lifecycle, from early-stage development through global commercialization and enforcement. We take a value-driven approach to trademark and domain name matters, rightsizing services to help clients control costs without sacrificing quality.

Core Trademark Services

• Trademark searching, clearance, filing, prosecution, and maintenance, with a focus on life sciences brands
• Comprehensive tradename clearance searches in the U.S. and abroad, designed to confirm that product names can be used and registered in multiple countries without conflict
• Strategic counseling on product naming, including coordination with FDA, EMA, and other regulatory requirements and alignment with patent, labeling, and lifecycle-management strategies
• Trademark policing, enforcement, defense, and litigation
• Opposition and cancellation proceedings, including disputes involving competing drug, device, and healthcare brands
• Advertising and promotional review, including substantiation, comparative claims, NAD proceedings, false advertising litigation, and life sciences–specific marketing compliance
• Internet and digital brand protection, including domain name strategy, enforcement, and online marketplace monitoring
• Copyright registrations and counseling

In IP-driven sectors such as life sciences, trade secrets are essential for protecting business intelligence, research, and proprietary manufacturing processes. We advise clients on trade secret protection as part of a comprehensive intellectual property strategy, including how to identify and catalog potential trade secrets and how to best position them for enforcement.

Our work involves identifying trade secrets, drafting confidentiality agreements, and developing trade secret policies and employee training programs. We also represent clients in disputes involving employee mobility, misappropriation by competitors, and requests for injunctive relief. These matters often intersect with patent litigation and other restrictive covenant disputes and can implicate both state and Federal law.