With an established presence in the life sciences sector, the ‘experienced, helpful and commercially minded’ Arnold & Porter handles a significant range of transactional work, such as global licensing arrangements and portfolio management, alongside patent litigation. The practice is jointly led by Beatriz San Martin, who has experience acting before the UK Courts and the CJEU, and Ewan Townsend, who demonstrates prowess on the commercial transactions side of the patents field. Other names to note include Tom Wilson and Jonathan Dack.
Testimonials
Collated independently by Legal 500 research team.
‘Arnold & Porter has long-established experience in life sciences and in all practices, for example regulatory, competition, IP, and transactions. This is reassuring because they should have seen and worked through the more complex issues and therefore can apply their experience to new matters.’
'Tom Wilson is excellent; speaks up in negotiations, good quality in drafting and suggests solutions.'
‘The team is experienced, helpful and commercially minded. They are also up to speed with life sciences technology and developments.’
‘Beatriz San Martin is a standout partner. She is smart, easy to work with and commercially minded. She stands out because of her understanding of complex life sciences technology, such as CRISPR.’
‘The firm provides comprehensive expertise in litigation and strategic counselling work across all IP fields, especially patent advice with a special focus on life sciences. Its lawyers combine extensive legal experience with commercial and practical know-how.'
‘Beatriz San Martin is outstanding lawyer with a great experience in life sciences patents. She has a great experience in coordinating pan-European litigation strategy, she is one of the UK Europe’s leading patent litigation solicitors, she has a deep expertise, proceedings experience and technical strengths.’
‘Excellent in-depth industry knowledge, Ewan Townsend is particularly a standout lawyer with a justifiably tremendous reputation.’
'Beatriz San Martin is an experienced and able patent and life sciences advisor and litigator.'
Key clients
- Pfizer
- Spark Therapeutics
- Sanofi
- Touchlight
- Norgine
- Essential Pharma
- UCB
- Alnylam
- Amicus
Work highlights
- Advising Pfizer on a number of significant matters relating to the supply of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine Comirnaty and Pfizer’s protease inhibitor Paxlovid.
- Advising Pfizer on the rollout of The Accord for a Healthier World initiative, under which Pfizer will provide all of its current and future patent-protected medicines and vaccines available in the U.S. or EU on a not-for-profit basis to 45 lower-income countries and collaborate with countries to identify efficient regulatory pathways and procurement processes to make such medicines available more quickly.
- Advising Norgine on an exclusive license with Fennec Pharmaceuticals in respect of PEDMARQSI®, the first and only approved therapy in the EU and U.K. for the prevention of ototoxicity induced by cisplatin chemotherapy in patients one month to 18 years of age with localised, non-metastatic solid tumours.
Practice head
The lawyer(s) leading their teams.
Beatriz San Martin, Ewan Townsend