Life Sciences

Baker Botts' Life Sciences Practice embraces the innovation that drives today's life sciences industry. We recognize this innovation involves not only ground-breaking science, but also an understanding of the business challenges inherent and unique to the industry. Our Life Science lawyers have the scientific acumen to understand and protect our clients' innovations, as well as the experience to address the myriad of legal issues involved in bringing a pharmaceutical product, medical device, or research/industrial tool to market. Our team of attorneys understand the unique intellectual property, transactional, corporate, and litigation issues that surround products and services in the life science industry, which allows us to effectively and efficiently help our clients maneuver through these challenges.

Our team of Life Sciences lawyers, including over 50 intellectual property lawyers and scientific advisors, understands that this industry is evolving at an incredible pace. Through our daily interactions and strategic client relationships, we recognize the life sciences industry is no longer defined solely by pharmaceutical, biological, and medical sciences. Instead,the industry has developed to cross into an array of scientific and technological disciplines.

An important differentiator of our Life Sciences Practice is the active integration of our high-technology colleagues, born of our firm's cultural emphasis on cross-discipline collaboration. Our Life Sciences lawyers are adept at linking to the full range of intellectual assets of the over 180 IP lawyers, patent agents, and scientific advisors firmwide, collectively holding more than 220 scientific and advanced technical degrees spanning diverse fields such as biology, chemistry, chemical engineering, food science, material science, mathematics, mechanical engineering, physics, computer science, electrical engineering and more.

This integration has particularly benefited our clients involved with the convergence of life sciences and high-technology, including the associated issues with hardware, software, data acquisition, data analysis and data management, among others. This breadth and diversity of technical backgrounds affords our Life Sciences Practice the aptitude to manage the most complex and diverse technological projects, including the protection, enforcement and commercialization of intellectual property, as the life sciences industry continues its evolution.

Furthermore, our Life Sciences Practice extends to and integrates a wealth of transactional and litigation experience and attorneys intimately involved with the life sciences industry, including corporate, antitrust and white collar crime issues and matters.  We regularly advise clients globally and with interdisciplinary teams to provide a collaborative mix of commercial transaction and regulatory compliance experience, such as with antitrust and white-collar and corporate investigations. Understanding the intersection of the life sciences industry and the commercial business objectives enhances our ability to add value to a host of complex client issues.

Legal and Technical Experience

Our Life Sciences lawyers provide a valuable combination of advanced academic backgrounds and sophisticated experience in organic and medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, biochemistry, molecular and cell biology, genetics, immunology, virology and microbiology, chemical engineering, biomedical engineering, physics, mechanical engineering and electronics. Our IP technical bench includes over 15 lawyers and professionals with PhDs/MDs in various biological and chemical disciplines.

Similarly, our life sciences clients are involved in all areas of medicine and health care, including oncology, neurology and psychiatry, allergy and immunology, diagnostics, structural heart and cardiovascular disease, genetic disease, metabolic disease, orthopedics and dentistry, infectious disease and pain management, as well as food sciences and veterinary medicine.

Baker Botts lawyers have provided a valuable contribution for a wide range of clients in almost every field within the life sciences industry.

Our clients include:

• large branded pharmaceutical companies
• established and emerging biotechnology companies
• international medical devices companies
• food and beverage companies
• universities and research institutions
• start-up and early stage life sciences companies
• companies in the energy and agricultural sectors with diverse life sciences-related technologies, including biofuels, industrial enzymes and genetically-modified plants and seeds

Services and Cross Collaboration

Our Life Sciences IP lawyers understand the complexities of the array of technologies presented by our clients, and effectively assist our clients in pursuing IP protection for these technologies, including patent protection and trade secret guidance. We also help our clients implement business and commercial objectives by strategically developing IP portfolios, as well as providing a full gamut of IP management needed in this competitive industry. Such assistance includes undertaking sophisticated due diligence reviews of industries, companies and related IP portfolios, evaluating freedom to operate for new technologies and product developments, and rendering opinions and/or counsel for clients with intellectual property strategy.

Baker Botts also assists our life sciences clients with the full range of business development, corporate venture and transactional needs within the life sciences industry, including identifying and evaluating targets for potential investment, mergers, and acquisitions, as well as structuring and negotiating inbound and outbound licensing agreements, collaboration agreements, joint ventures, pre-clinical and clinical trial agreements, and manufacturing agreements.

When necessary, our Life Sciences IP lawyers enforce our clients IP against third parties, or defend our clients from claims of infringement, whether as plaintiffs or defendants, in trial and appellate courts. We are regularly involved in global IP disputes, including opposition proceedings before the European, Japanese, Australian and Indian Patent Offices.

Our corporate, antitrust, and white-collar and corporate investigations practice groups share the same life sciences focus as our intellectual property group, and have handled a wide spectrum of legal issues with clients in the life sciences industry. These practice groups work closely together to deliver "high-quality legal advice... in a way that meets both cost and timeliness expectations."

As a team, our Life Sciences lawyers firmwide provide seasoned legal counseling and cross-legal collaboration, through which we can help you better understand and anticipate the issues, objectives and needs you may face.