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Allen & Overy expanding life sciences intellectual property litigation practice with five new U.S. partners and launching in Boston

A&O today announced that Elizabeth Holland, Bill James, John Bennett, Nick Mitrokostas and Daniel Margolis will join as partners in A&O’s U.S. Intellectual Property (IP) Litigation practice, focused on the life sciences industry. Elizabeth will become U.S. Head of A&O’s Life Sciences Practice. The five-partner team will be based in New York, Washington, D.C. and Boston, and will bolster A&O’s global life sciences patent litigation capabilities. The five partners will join A&O from Goodwin Procter’s IP Litigation practice, where they focused on representing innovators in the life sciences sector.

This highly experienced and market-leading team has received many accolades including IP Practice Group of the Year by IP 360 and Hatch-Waxman Firm of the Year by LMG Life Sciences in four of the past five years. Elizabeth has three times been named Hatch-Waxman litigator of the year by LMG Life Sciences and is ranked in Chambers Global, Chambers USA, IAM 1000—The World’s Leading Patent Practitioners, among others.

This launches A&O’s presence in Boston, renowned as an international life sciences hub for its highly skilled workforce; leading universities in academic science and research fields; innovative research and development districts; proximity to major research hospitals; the presence of both growth stage and established technology and life sciences companies; and the strategic presence of venture capital and private equity resources. John Bennett and Nick Mitrokostas will be based in A&O’s new Boston office.

The announcement follows the addition of eight partners from the White & Case LLP Technology practice in August 2021, and recent hirings of life sciences-focused litigation partners Sapna Palla in New York and Stephan Neuhaus in Germany to A&O’s Intellectual Property practice in July and May 2021, respectively.

Global Head of Litigation, Karen Seward, commented, “The addition of this top-tier team with a proven track record of collaboration and success is a testament to A&O’s status as a leading global intellectual property litigation advisor. We look forward to enhancing our client offering and expanding our U.S. footprint with this strategic investment in our litigation partnership.”

U.S. Senior Partner Tim House said, “Our sustained expansion across the U.S. speaks to A&O’s strategy to become the only elite global law firm to offer scaled, coordinated, top tier intellectual property litigation capabilities to life sciences businesses across the U.S., UK, continental Europe and Asia-Pacific. The ability to develop coordinated, cross-border IP protection strategies from within a single firm with a uniform commitment to quality and client service is something that is requested by more and more of our global clients. Combining this renowned U.S. life sciences litigation team with our recent technology litigation and antitrust lateral hires on the East and West Coasts, we offer a premier life sciences and technology litigation capability to cover the full spectrum of IP protection that our clients need in these rapidly converging sectors, in all the most important global jurisdictions.”

A&O's truly global IP litigation offering provides an ideal platform to continue expanding our innovator life sciences practice. We look forward to the opportunity to offer our clients a single, elite platform for worldwide IP litigation.

Elizabeth Holland

For further information, please contact Kris Cole in Los Angeles on pro-a&o@prosek.com.