Client Testimonials

"The Waterfront Partnership has assisted us in a multi-jurisdictional pharmaceutical patent dispute. It is a young, flexible and enthusiastic firm that delivers work to a high standard at very competitive prices. We have greatly enjoyed working with them"

Theo Peters, Director of Intellectual Property, Synthon B.V,

www.synthon.nl

Case Studies

Bio-Pharma Case Studies

Developing 

"We have found someone we want to work with but how can we ensure we get what we want out of the collaboration and keep costs to a minimum"

Our client is a pharmaceutical company who amongst other activities uses contract research organisations to conduct certain research and deliver specific results. Often the projects are complicated, conducted over long periods of time and change significantly as the project progresses. An understanding of the scientific imperatives is key, in particular to negotiations around payment terms, IP and liability. Working closely with our client and the CRO, we assisted in the drafting of the heads of terms, flushing out at an early stage what were the key business drivers for both parties, including what allocation of legal risk both were prepared to accept. Accordingly, we were in a position to draft a very fair first draft of the collaboration agreement, which resulted in fewer subsequent contract negotiations and reasonable legal fees for our client.

Protecting

"We think we might infringe a patent and are at risk of being sued - what comfort can you give us?"

Our client is a pharmaceutical distributor and was considering distributing a product for a medical use which was covered under a third party patent. Our client knew the product had great potential (and had been recognised for this in a particular field for at least a number of years). We conducted a full validity and sufficiency assessment of the patent, which involved researching prior art and locating and interviewing three experts in the relevant technical field. We concluded that the patent was both invalid and insufficient. Our client knew that they had sufficient ammunition if a letter before action arrived and went ahead with distributing the product in question for the specific medical purpose, confident that if the claim form arrived that a settlement should be achievable, failing which a robust defence could be prepared.

"We need a more cost effective way to handle the experiments as part of our ongoing multi-jurisdictional litigation seeking to invalidate a patent"

Our client is a pharmaceutical company, involved in multi-jurisdictional litigation. They needed a more cost effective way for the repeat of an experiment to be managed in relation to Irish litigation proceedings. We worked closely with our client and their instructed Irish & English lawyers to deliver this service in a seamless fashion, inputting in to procedure, strategy, party & party correspondence and drafting the final report, which detailed experiments lasting nearly 11 weeks.

Exploiting

Our client was the owner of a family of patents relating to a chemical compound which it was believed would alleviate anxiety. Our client had developed the technology with the assistance of a UK university (agreement 1), and both parties had agreed to share any revenues gained if it was commercially successful. Between themselves, and with the assistance of another drug development company (agreement 2), our client and the university had taken the compound through proof of concept and the early stages of drug development, to Phase I (the earliest trials in the life of a new drug or treatment).

PharmaCo expressed an interest in taking an exclusive license under the patents for the purposes of effecting stages II-IV trials and commercialisation thereon (agreement 3). Negotiations regarding this agreement focused heavily on the:

  • scope of the licensed compounds;
  • payment structure including minimum sales obligations;
  • non-compete provisions;
  • ownership of collaboration IP;
  • diligence requirements of PharmaCo;
  • termination provisions (including payment of our client's wind down costs);
  • outline development plan; and
  • operation of the joint steering committee, including our client's ability to make changes to the research and commercialisation program in the future.

We have assisted our client at each stage along the development process and have helped to put in place a number of contracts on their behalf, including agreements 1-3. We have gained an in-depth understanding of our client's business, and we believe have helped to secure a relatively strong position for our client in terms of maximising licensing streams (both from the licensed technology and our client?s other retained technologies) and minimising losses in the event the drug cannot for whatever reason be commercialised.

Bio-Pharma