Biotechnology & Medical Devices

All industries

Biotechnology and medical devices are fields in which innovation arises where scientific research, engineering and clinical application meet, and in which protecting rights calls for a thorough understanding of the underlying technology. LGV assists multinational pharmaceutical groups, manufacturers of medical and aesthetic devices, companies in pharmaceutical technology and food supplements, hospital groups, operators in genetic testing and therapeutic technologies, and direct selling companies in the health and beauty sector, with experience extending to medicinal products, vaccines, diagnostics, biotechnology and biomaterials. In this sector, the firm’s work ranges from pre-litigation advice and patent litigation, including urgent proceedings coordinated with parallel actions abroad, to invalidity and entitlement actions, design and trademark protection, including oppositions, and unfair competition claims. Alongside litigation, the firm advises on freedom to operate, on the most suitable forms of protection and on e-commerce, coordinating where necessary actions before the courts of several countries and before the EUIPO.

 

Significant experience

• The firm’s experience in this sector is very broad and includes, among other things, pre-litigation advice in the hotly debated field of Covid-19 vaccines and assistance to one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical groups in relation to a patent in proceedings in Italy. For a company active for over forty years in pharmaceutical technology and food supplements, LGV has also brought an invalidity and entitlement action concerning a patent against a former collaboration partner.
• Specific technical expertise underpinned the firm’s assistance to an Austrian company active in phototherapy and in the development of a dedicated device, whose CEO is also an inventor and holds a patent in this field, and to companies that produce and manage canine DNA samples.
• A cross-border dimension marks the advice given to a Berlin-based medical technology company, specialising in breast tumour localisation and biopsy devices and part of a US medtech group, in connection with patent litigation against an Italian company. Patents, designs and unfair competition are instead at the core of multi-level litigation across several jurisdictions in which LGV assists an Italian manufacturer of devices for the medical and aesthetic sector, which has already obtained favourable rulings.
• On the trademark and e-commerce side, the firm assisted one of Germany’s largest private hospital groups, including in an opposition against an Italian trademark application by a company providing medical and dental services, and advised on e-commerce a German holding company based in Ahlen, North Rhine-Westphalia, which heads one of Europe’s leading social commerce and direct selling groups in the health and beauty sector.