Insights

Washington – June 30, 2022: Intellectual Asset Management recognized Crowell & Moring in its IAM Patent 1000 – The World’s Leading Patent Practitioners guide, awarding the firm a gold band ranking as one of the top four firms handling patent litigation and transactions in Belgium, and a silver ranking for the firm’s Chicago office. This marks the ninth consecutive year that the firm has been ranked in the guide in Belgium. The guide also recommended Brussels partner Kristof Roox in the gold band; partner Jan-Diederik Lindemans in the silver band; and senior counsel Jurgen Figys in the bronze band.

Washington – June 15, 2022: Crowell & Moring has been recommended in eight practice areas in the 15th edition of the Legal 500 United States. In addition, partner Daniel R. Forman, co-chair of the firm’s Government Contracts Group, has been named to Legal 500’s “Hall of Fame” for Government Contracts. Antitrust & Competition partner Megan L. Wolf has been named a “Next Generation Partner” for Merger Control. Advertising & Media partners Christopher A. Cole and Lauren Aronson have been named a “Leading Lawyer” and “Next Generation Partner” for Advertising and Marketing Litigation respectively. The firm’s full rankings can be viewed here.

Washington – January 3, 2022: Crowell & Moring elected 13 lawyers to the firm’s partnership, effective January 1, 2022. The firm also promoted seven to the position of senior counsel and 19 associates to the position of counsel. The new partners have been promoted from within the ranks of the firm’s London, New York, and Washington, D.C. offices and from across several practice groups, including Advertising & Media; Antitrust & Competition; Corporate; Energy; Environment & Natural Resources; Government Contracts; Health Care; Technology & Intellectual Property; International Dispute Resolution; Litigation; Mass Tort, Product, and Consumer Litigation; and Privacy & Cybersecurity.

The Federal Circuit recently denied a petition for rehearing en banc in the much watched In re Cellect matter.  The landmark panel decision determined how obviousness-type double patenting (“ODP”) is impacted when patent term adjustment (“PTA”) is added to the term of one or more patents in a family under 35 U.S.C. § 154(b), resulting in different terms for the family member patents that would otherwise expire on the same day.

Unitary Patents are being granted and the Unified Patent Court is up and running as of June 1, 2023.  Since the 1970’s, there have been attempts at establishing a unitary European patent that would cover multiple European countries and would be enforced by a single court system.  This type of system is in contrast to the system known since 1973 of granting European Patents by the European Patent Office (EPO) and validating the European Patent in designated European countries, wherein each validated patent is enforced in the national court associated with the validated patent.

Since the Supreme Court’s 2017 sea change venue decision in TC Heartland v. Kraft Food Group Brands, the Northern District of West Virginia has seen an uptick in substantive Hatch-Waxman litigation involving local pharmaceutical company, Viatris Inc. (formerly known as Mylan Pharmaceuticals). Viatris is frequently named as a defendant in Hatch-Waxman litigations, each of which is triggered by Viatris’s service of a statutorily-required notice letter stating why the patents that allegedly cover the brand name drug are invalid and/or not infringed by a proposed generic drug. Hatch-Waxman litigants have battled over the requirements for these notice letters in other courts. In Bausch Health Ireland Ltd. et al. v. Mylan Pharms. Inc., the Northern District of West Virginia has now added to that body of law, adopting a holding consistent with other courts that a generic drug company is not foreclosed from asserting additional defenses in litigation even if those defenses were not raised in the generic drug company’s notice letter. See No. 1:22CV20, 2023 WL 2726432, at *3 (N.D.W. Va. Mar. 30, 2023).

Partner Deborah Yellin and Senior Counsel Dr. Mary Anne Schofield, will be presenting "Biosimilar Biological Products" as part of the Food and Drug Law Institute’s Introduction to Biologics and Biosimilars Law and Regulation course in Washington, D.C., October 1-2. The two-day course explores the regulation of biological products, including biotechnology–derived therapeutic proteins, human tissue, gene, and cell products. Attendees will also gain a comprehensive understanding of the various administrative agencies that impact these industries. 

Cybersecurity is a key concern for all innovative companies and an incident response plan is critical for any company with connected products. Please join Crowell & Moring and industry insiders on May 8 for a discussion on best practices in incident response as we walk through a timeline of a cyber-attack on an autonomous vehicle. We will respond to a realistic intrusion scenario, strategically minimize vulnerabilities, and address multi-disciplinary points of view and decision-making—cybersecurity, regulatory, transactional, and intellectual property—related to autonomous vehicle technology development and deployment. Learn real time incident response, consider effective strategies, and formulate best practices to reach your end goal and ensure minimal risk to your autonomous vehicle business and investments—all in an informal and entertaining setting.  

Learn basic principles of copyright, trademark, trade secret, and patent law, with emphasis on how micro-entrepreneurs should be advised as they develop their business ideas and confront the need to protect their own intellectual property assets and avoid infringing the intellectual property rights of others. The session will include discussion of the advantages of timely registration, practicalities of various search options, strategies for obtaining federal registration, and issues raised when the micro-entrepreneur’s business includes an online presence.