Dr
Claire
Irvine

Experience

From her first days in the patent profession, Claire has been involved with many of the major innovations in the life sciences’ field. These have spanned immunology-related therapeutics, RNA therapeutics, synthetic biology and genetic diagnostics, including applications of bioinformatics. This continues as a partner of both the specialist HGF CRISPR and microbiome IP teams.

Claire has extensive experience of opposition and appeal proceedings at the European Patent Office, including both defending and opposing high profile patents which have attracted much interest beyond patent professionals. This has included patents from the early days of recombinant antibodies through to controversial patents arising from gene discovery and more recently, much publicised patents for gene-editing technologies.

Claire also has much experience of handling patent portfolios demanding inter-disciplinary input including in the fields of bioinformatics and medical and diagnostic devices. This has included much in the application of high-throughput nucleic acid sequencing technologies such as non-invasive foetal testing and cancer diagnostics.

As one of the most experienced patent partners’ of the life science team, Claire has the reputation of being able to apply creative thinking to turn around the most difficult IP problems. She has been responsible for building the IP portfolios of a number of companies and continues to enjoy the challenge of advising on freedom-to-operate and IP strategy.