HGF has one of the largest and most experienced pharmaceutical IP teams in Europe.  Many of our patent attorneys have joined from senior positions at large pharmaceutical companies and bring extensive in-house experience of building, managing, and defending global patent portfolios to protect high-profile medicines.

Our multidisciplinary teams support clients to capture and protect innovation at all stages of drug discovery and development.  We specialise in providing early pre-filing IP strategy advice, invention capture, drafting new patent applications, patent prosecution, infringement analysis, European Patent Office (EPO) oppositions & appeals, and, in conjunction with our IP litigators, multi-jurisdictional patent litigation for patent owners and challengers. We also have specialist experience of supplementary protection certificates (SPCs), European regulatory data exclusivity, and IP due diligence to support licensing and acquisition activities. A large and growing part of our pharmaceutical practice involves contentious proceedings and many of our most experienced patent attorneys specialise in opposition and appeal proceedings before the EPO. We are regularly involved with complex, high-value multi-party oppositions, and we also work closely with our IP litigators on pharmaceutical patent disputes in national courts across Europe and at the Unified Patent Court.

Our technical expertise covers all aspects of patenting new (or repurposed) drug compounds, new physical forms of compounds (salts, solvates, polymorphs, co-crystals), pharmaceutical formulations (including advanced drug delivery platform systems), drug derivatives and conjugates (such as antibody drug conjugates and PROTACs), new manufacturing processes for making drug compounds or formulations, methods of treatment and therapeutic uses, new dosage regimens, combination therapies, personalised medicine approaches, and nutraceuticals.