Life Sciences, Biotech
Apart from information and communication technology, medicine and healthcare as well as biotechnology will probably be the most important growth areas in the future. A team of SKW Schwarz lawyers has therefore specialised on life science and biotechnology issues. We advise pharmaceuticals companies, producers of medical devices and biotechnology companies and their founders at all stages of the value chain. The most important issues are:
- Protection of intellectual property rights: We ensure the protection of patent and intellectual property rights for the products of our clients and advise them on how to best licence their products.
- Corporate/corporate finance: Our Life Sciences/Biotech department has considerable expertise with growth-related issues, in particular growth financing, for example by venture capital, private equity, capital increases or mergers and acquisitions.
- Distribution law: We check and draft distribution agreements and give advice on all legal matters which may arise in day-to-day distribution business.
- Regulation and product liability: We support clients during the drug approval process, in matters of laboratory regulations and in all issues related to producer liability for defective products.
We have joined the Biolegis network in order to supplement our own expertise with international experience. Biolegis brings together independent law firms from currently 14 European countries. It gives our clients access to about 120 life science lawyers and is probably the largest network of its kind in Europe.
The Biolegis members have considerable experience with the following issues:
- monitoring and enforcement of intellectual property rights;
- production and distribution regulations;
- environmental protection;
- product liability;
- research and development;
- licence agreements;
- EU regulatory law;
- corporate finance, private equity, IPOs;
- mergers and acquisitions.
Examples
In the framework of our regular work for a global producer of homoeopathic complexes we have dealt with the following issues:
- producer-specific redesign of all technical agreements;
- regular adjustments to the legal basis for changes in the distribution system;
- solution of regulatory and corporate-law problems in case of acquisitions of or disinvestments in product lines and/or subsidiaries.
When a major distribution partner of our client was taken over by a competitor, we enforced a special termination right for our client in order to prevent that our client’s regulatory information became available to its competitors.
In the transactions area we have advised pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies both in the acquisition and the sale of other companies and conducted due diligence not only on the traditional corporate and commercial questions, but also on regulatory and IP issues. In doing so we relied on our knowledge of the sector and its business models. For example, we examined the master services agreements of a German biotech target in order to determine to which extent their volume, their durations and the possibilities to terminate them support the sustainability of the business plans.
We supported a large German pharmaceuticals group in drafting and negotiating contracts with research institutions. The contracts were often multilateral and included foreign government institutes and universities.
We have assisted another large German pharmaceuticals company with its internal data management. The main issues were the treatment of data and information to be collected and a special software, whose development we supported by specifically drafted contracts.