D Young & Co

Firm overview:

Clients’ trust in D Young & Co is evident from its half-century relationship with Sony for patent prosecution services, and Novo Nordisk’s selection of the firm to protect its wonder-drug portfolio of Wegovy, Ozempic and Rybelsus in Europe. Offering a one-stop IP shop, D Young & Co fields multidisciplinary teams to address clients’ needs regarding increasingly complex technologies. Clients benefit from contact with the full team, from partners to trainees.

The firm’s work has increased over the past 12 months across all sectors, including attracting new clients in fast-moving and complex technical disciplines such as techbio. Work from existing patent clients has increased by nearly 26%, with rises in filings at the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) and European Patent Office (EPO). Notable work for new clients includes assisting planet-friendly cleaning product brand Purdy & Figg with the establishment of its IP portfolio.

D Young & Co is particularly renowned for its ability to handle contentious matters at the EPO, and it draws on strong resources to do so with a team of 68 qualified practitioners—one of the largest in Europe. A number of clients retain the firm solely for its expertise at the forum.

Team overview:

D Young & Co’s team of 250 staff is split between offices in London, Munich and Southampton, and includes 71 qualified European patent attorneys of whom the majority are registered representatives before the Unified Patent Court (UPC).

Partners Garreth Duncan and Tom Pagdin are singled out by a peer as “very efficient, knowledgeable and friendly”. Duncan has particular expertise in pharmaceutical patenting and spent time as an in-house attorney at Pfizer, while Pagdin supports a broad range of clients with his background in immunology and molecular genetics.

Alan Boyd is a go-to contact for technology clients, with knowledge of computer science and experience as a software engineer researcher. An industry peer says they have found the team to be “knowledgeable in the computer implemented inventions space, particularly Alan Boyd”.

Partner Kit Wong, based in London, is a “brilliant attorney” who “knows her stuff”, according to a leading professional in the industry. Wong has handled portfolios for a large number of clients in the chemical field, with a broad practice that includes prosecution, EPO oppositions and appeals, and advising on infringement.

Other key members of the team include partners Anthony Albutt and Simon O’Brien. Albutt leads the firm’s expanding mechanical practice and advises clients such as Toyota and Skechers, and O’Brien handles worldwide patent portfolios, with his expertise encompassing biological and chemical subject matter.

Key matters:

• Patent drafting, filing and prosecution work—Sony Sports Group

A large team of D Young & Co attorneys handles a high volume of work for Sony, including drafting high tech patent applications for divisions of the company such as Sony Europe, Sony Interactive Entertainment and Sony Olympus Medical Solutions. The firm has provided European patent prosecution services to Sony for 55 years.

Partner Jonathan Jackson leads the team working with Sony Sports Group, and drafted patents protecting the technology for Hawk-Eye—the computer vision system used in sports such as cricket, tennis and football, where it provides the offside technology.

Other key team members include partner Arun Roy and associate Simon Schofield.

• Patent filing and prosecution—Cosmetic Warriors (Lush)

D Young & Co handles the global trademark and design portfolio for Cosmetic Warriors. The work includes UK and European patent filings relating to legacy product Henna Brick, which is particularly dear to Lush co-founder Mark Constantine who has a background in hair care.

David Alcock and Sophie Slater are the key partners involved.

• Patent opposition and appeal at the EPO—Novo Nordisk

With a long-standing relationship with Novo Nordisk, D Young & Co has recently taken on a large amount of work for the client—which was until recently Europe’s largest company—defending granted patents in oppositions and appeals, as well as prosecuting divisional applications.

The work relates primarily to Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy, Ozempic and Rybelsus products which contain semaglutide for use in the treatment of diabetes and obesity. The drugs are highly valuable to Novo Nordisk and obtaining valid patent protection in Europe is of key commercial importance to the client. In recent EPO appeal work, D Young & Co took over the representation of Novo Nordisk from London competitor J A Kemp.

Partners Charles Harding and Jennifer O’Farrell lead on the work.

• Opposition and appeal work—Teva Pharmaceutical Industries

D Young & Co advises Teva, one of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies in the world by revenue, on how to exploit its IP rights. As well as patent filing prosecution services, the team has a significant number of commercially valuable oppositions and appeals at various stages for the client. Over the past 12 months the firm has advised on numerous cases that have been litigated in the UK courts, and brought parallel actions at the EPO.

These have included successfully achieving revocation by the Board of Appeal of five patents related to Apixaban (brand name Eliquis), and assisting Teva with oppositions and appeals at the EPO relating to sacubitril-valsartan (Entresto) which is sold by Novartis for the treatment of chronic heart failure.

Partners leading the work include Lawrence King, Neil Nachshen and Kit Wong.

Clients:

Advanced Instruments, Airspan Communications, Arm, Asahi Kasei, BioNTech, Bluescope Steel, Boehringer Ingelheim, Cern, Convatec, Cosmetic Warriors (Lush), Eden Research, GKN Aerospace (owned by Melrose), Global Blue, IFF International Flavors & Fragrances, InterDigital, Intuit, Medincell, Novo Nordisk, Omniab, Oracle, Ospedale San Raffaele, Oxford Biomedica, Pathos Therapeutics, Queen Mary University London, Roche, Skechers, Sony, Takeda Pharmaceutical Industries, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, The Francis Crick Institute, The Lubrizol Corporation, The Pirbright Institute, Toyota, UCLB (and University College London), University of Bournemouth, University of Southampton, Vitrolife, Zealand Pharma