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Practice/Industry Group Overview
Clients in the life sciences and healthcare sector have industry-specific needs as they face the usual challenges of the business cycle, from obtaining financing, raising additional capital, expanding their business through acquisitions, acquiring and protecting intellectual property (IP) rights, developing, manufacturing and marketing their products, to dealing with both offensive and defensive IP and product litigation. These clients also face challenges specific to the Life Sciences and Healthcare sector from strategic IP planning in a complex scientific environment, and regulatory and IP issues relating to increasing pressure for generic drug products to pipeline expansion through licensing and strategic alliances.
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Services Available
Dewey & LeBoeuf's Global Life Sciences practice assists clients in meeting these challenges by understanding our clients' business strategies and goals. The breadth and depth of our practices enable us to employ a multidisciplinary approach, seamlessly leveraging the experience of our lawyers in our intellectual property, corporate, litigation, tax, international trade, regulatory and other related practices. Lawyers practicing in the life sciences field also have technical backgrounds in molecular biology, biochemistry and related disciplines. As a result, we can address complex scientific concepts, as well as complicated legal issues.
At Dewey & LeBoeuf, we are proud of our ability to understand our clients' concerns and goals, and tailor client-specific strategies to address those concerns and meet their objectives. Our clients include established pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, start-up and emerging companies, medical device companies, healthcare companies, philanthropic institutions, venture capital firms, pension funds and investment banks.
Representative clients include Novartis, Eli Lilly, Wyeth, MedImmune, Illumina, Progenics, MiddleBrook, Actavis and Medtronics. The following are representative recent representations:
- Novartis in connection with the development, promotion and manufacture of emerging antiviral compounds and, in a separate transaction, the in-licensing of best-in-class siRNA technology (in transactions also involving the acquisition of significant equity interests in the respective developers of the technologies);
- MedImmune in its $ 15.6 billion acquisition by Astra Zeneca; and
- Underwriters in IPOs, convertible securities and follow-on equity offerings by life sciences companies with an aggregate value of over $2 billion.
In IP litigation, patent cases Dewey & LeBoeuf IP lawyers have handled in the life sciences and healthcare sector include:
- The prosecution and defense of numerous patent infringement cases involving branded pharmaceuticals, vaccines, intermediates, and ophthalmic products;
- The prosecution and defense of many patent cases involving medical devices such as spinal implants, laparoscopic surgical instruments and sutures, coronary stents, bioprosthetic heart valves, cardiac pacemakers and defibrillators, optics, hip and breast implants, incontinence products and medical imaging systems;
- The prosecution and defense of patent cases involving biologics such as monoclonal antibody technology, human papillomavirus technology, the diagnostic use of monoclonal antibodies and a tumor necrosis factor-alpha blocker; and
- Patent litigation involving medical testing and diagnostic equipment such as DNA assays, triage systems, TOX drug screens and drugs of abuse panels.
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