Overview
Vinson & Elkins has long appreciated that the success of biotechnology-based businesses often depends on an ability to preserve valuable intellectual property rights. Accordingly, Vinson & Elkins has for decades had a group of lawyers skilled in perfecting rights in patents, copyrights, and trademarks, and committed to resolving disputes regarding intellectual property rights for biotechnology clients.
Our lawyers and patent agents have technical expertise and advanced degrees in a broad array of biotechnology-related fields including: molecular biology; molecular and human genetics; immunology; biochemistry; toxicology; pharmacology; pathology; medicine; veterinary medicine; and chemistry and chemical engineering. Our lawyers also have experience in areas for which the biosciences will provide platform technologies for future growth, such as aerospace, electrical, polymer and mechanical engineering, physics, and computer science. This technical experience, combined with our worldwide network of legal resources, helps to assure that our clients' valuable intellectual property is secure and protected. In addition, our IP lawyers are supported by experienced patent agents who work efficiently with clients on patent prosecution and other matters before the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Vinson & Elkins provides biotechnology companies the broad range of legal services necessary for success in the new millennium. Vinson & Elkins knows the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and related industries. From stem cells to transgenic organisms, small molecules to proteomics, southern blots to biochips, microcomputers to nanomaterials, we understand the technology.
Whether your company needs assistance with patent portfolio development and evaluation, patent, trademark or commercial litigation, technology licensing, strategic alliance formation, corporate financing and structuring, or tax and employee compensation issues, we have the experience it takes to get the job done.
Vinson & Elkins' biotechnology practice is made up of a diverse group of lawyers with world-class experience in intellectual property litigation, patent and trademark prosecution, patent portfolio management, evaluation and licensing, IPOs, raising capital, mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, financing, corporate and securities law, labor and employment law, outsourcing arrangements, healthcare law, tax law, antitrust litigation, and trade regulation. We have the resources to understand the unique challenges you face, and find the solutions you require.
Through domestic and international patent, trademark and copyright filings, intellectual property portfolio development and management, due diligence and freedom-to-operate opinion work and technology licensing, our lawyers are able to protect and enforce intellectual property rights or to defend against the claims of others. Our lawyers are active in all phases of intellectual property litigation in state and federal courts, and most are admitted to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Our lawyers also represent and counsel clients in matters involving unfair competition, deceptive trade practices, non-competition covenants, secrecy agreements, licensing, distributorship arrangements, breach of fiduciary and agency relationships, employment disputes, indemnification, antitrust matters, and all types of contract and tort litigation in which the subject matter of the litigation is technical.
Our experience includes a diverse range of technologies: targeted gene regulation, homologous recombination, tissue engineering, gene therapy, protein therapy, transgenic animals, transgenic plants, neuroscience, pain management, electrical stimulation therapy, carbon nanotubes, nanomaterials, stem cells, pharmacogenomics, proteomics, fusion proteins, express sequence tags, pharmaceuticals, keratin-based materials, small molecules, medical implants, wound healing, angiogenesis, cosmetics, blood filtration systems, bioremediation, biorefining, agricultural supplements, leukocyte filtration systems, blood and blood component processing, trandermal pharmaceutical systems, neurological pharmacology, gene cloning, microarrays, nutriceuticals, natural materials flavor-extraction, gene discovery, auto-immune therapies, ribonucleic acid research tools.