Crowell & Moring LLP

Intellectual Property, Life Sciences, EU Regulatory: Pharmaceuticals and biotechnology

Senior Counsel

When pharma and biotech companies are in need of cross-jurisdictional intellectual property/patent and regulatory advice, they trust Jurgen Figys for his understanding of the life sciences business — being trained as a biomedical scientist and seconded at pharma companies — as well as his profound knowledge of the legal IP and regulatory challenges in this field. As one of the few lawyers in Belgium also trained as a scientist, Jurgen is able to combine his scientific reasoning with his legal knowledge, a considerable asset in the technology-driven IP field.

Jurgen predominantly works with clients in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, with a particular focus on complex patent litigation and regulatory advice. He has particular experience in patent litigation with regard to invalidity, third-party opposition proceedings against counterfeit seizure, and preliminary injunction proceedings. His pre-contentious experience includes freedom-to-operate patent analyses and drafting protective letters. Jurgen is also involved in a number of trademark cases, such as parallel import litigation.

Within life sciences, Jurgen provides strategic regulatory advice to pharmaceutical and biotech companies as well as national and European industry associations. His experience covers a broad range of regulatory issues such as data exclusivity, EU marketing authorizations, pricing and reimbursement of medicinal products, advertising, medical devices, clinical trials, and data. Digital transformation in the health sector is also one of Jurgen’s main focus areas.

Thanks to his scientific background, Jurgen is also able to advise clients on EU regulatory issues with a technical angle. For example, he has an impressive substantive knowledge of REACH through his work for a wide range of U.S.- and EU-based clients. He also regularly advises on CLP issues. In addition to providing legal and strategic advice on REACH/CLP compliance, Jurgen is particularly able to assist clients with their more science-driven submissions to the European Chemicals Agency (preliminary risk assessments of potential chemicals of concern, etc.).

Prior to joining Crowell & Moring in 2013, Jurgen worked for 10 years at the Free University of Brussels as a Ph.D. student and a director of successive scientific studies for the Belgian Ministry of Defense, performing research on cell metabolism, apoptosis, and cancer physiology. The design of a nonnatural linear constrained peptide library was one of the main achievements of his project.

Jurgen is a frequent speaker at professional conferences, both on IP and regulatory topics, and teaches a course on patent enforcement to biomedical students at the University of Antwerp. He is also an active member of the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property.

Dutch, English, French

Member of the Dutch-speaking Brussels Bar

Free University of Brussels (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), M.B.M.S. (2001) magna cum laude Free University of Brussels (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), LL.M. (2010) cum laude