Practice Areas & Industries: Darby & Darby Professional Corporation

Practice/Industry Group Overview

Darby has a premier practice spanning a broad range of chemical, pharmaceutical and biotechnical disciplines.  We understand our clients' technology and are quick to identify, and clearly communicate, the scientific, business and legal challenges they face.  The practice is the largest and fastest growing in the firm, with nearly 50 professionals, 20 of whom have Ph.D.s in relevant subspecialties.

Some of our clients bring us large, dramatic problems with millions of dollars at stake.  Others need daily incremental victories to nurture successful businesses based on well-protected patents.  In fact, we act in place of in-house counsel for a number of clients and manage their entire patent portfolio, working closely with their internal business and technical groups.

We tailor our patent procurement and evaluation efforts to the real world, and we give our clients worldwide patent strategies that are carefully considered to reflect business, environmental and competitive conditions in diverse countries.  Our clients depend upon our authoritative opinion work to advise them about the validity, infringement or enforceability of patents. 

Services Available

We handle interferences, reissues and reexaminations in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, direct oppositions in foreign patent offices and litigate in many jurisdictions.  We have helped many of our clients deal with the legal and business ramifications of the Hatch-Waxman legislation, which has changed the competitive landscape of the pharmaceutical industry.

We also negotiate agreements that help our clients create income opportunities or launch cooperative ventures.  We routinely review patent portfolios prior to acquisitions to determine their strength and scope of protection, identify potential infringement liabilities and develop defenses or other strategies for managing any risks we identify.  In one instance, we analyzed 5,000 patents in less than two weeks to meet a client’s accelerated due diligence schedule.

We advise pharmaceutical and biotech clients, whose technologies range from bioinformatics to virology, and all things in between.  Our clients include leaders in the areas of small molecule drug discovery and design; medicinal chemistry; central nervous system pharmacology; genomics and proteomics; microarrays and microfluidics; immunology; neurobiology; cancer biology therapeutics; parasitic diseases; imaging and other diagnostics; industrial enzymology; environmental biotechnology; transgenic animals and other disease models; rational drug design; computational chemistry; modified release and other drug delivery technologies; gene therapy; and molecular modeling.

Our chemical clients' technologies include polymer chemistry; aluminum refining; photographic emulsions; precious metals; catalyst technologies; biocides; preservatives; detergents, including enzymatic systems; fabric softeners; petrochemicals; antistatic agents; lubricants; surfactants; emulsifiers; fiber technologies; paper-making; and printing inks.

We particularly enjoy helping clients carve out new territory.  Many of our clients have been pioneers in their fields, including AutoImmune in oral tolerance therapies; Medarex in fully human antibodies; Amicus Therapeutics in developing small molecule drugs for genetic diseases; and Regenesis Bioremediation Products in environmental biotechnology.

For the professionals in this practice, staying one step ahead of developments in the marketplace and the laboratory is a way of life.