James Legg

Partner

James is a Chartered Patent Attorney and European Patent Attorney in the Biotechnology and Life Sciences Group.

James has experience in advising on a wide range of intellectual property and commercial matters affecting both large and small biotech and life science clients. He specialises in preparing and prosecuting UK, European and PCT patent applications, and in representing clients in European opposition and appeal proceedings. He has also advised clients involved in multi-jurisdictional patent litigation.

James has particular expertise in handling patent and technology matters relating to biological therapeutics and molecular biology, acting in matters regarding antibody therapeutics and vaccines, diagnostic assays, genetic analysis, genetic engineering and gene silencing and stem cell technology. He has worked with clients from a diverse range of industries including: pharmaceuticals, biologics, biomedical, diagnostics, nutrition, and consumer goods companies.

Prior to joining the patent profession, James worked as a consultant in the innovation and technology management group at Sagentia Ltd, and was also part of a research and development team for Procter & Gamble, Brussels.

James has an MA Cantab (Natural Sciences) and a PhD in molecular biology, both from the University of Cambridge.

Recent work

Represented Adaptive Biotechnologies Corporation in European opposition proceedings and successfully defended European Patent No. 2 364 368 which provides broad protection for immune profiling using next-generation sequencing (NGS).
Assisting Cambridge-based biotech companies by filing patent applications to protect their platform technologies and developing strategies to protect applications of those technologies.
Assisting researchers at Uppsala University by filing patent applications to protect their platform technology relating to RNAi.

Publications

'EPO excludes from patentability “plants and animals exclusively obtained by an essentially biological breeding process”', June 2017

'English Patents Court hints at a (slightly) more flexible approach to the assessment of priority', August 2016

'CRISPR/Cas patent wars have begun at the European Patent Office', BioNews, November 2015

'Warner-Lambert v Actavis – further guidance on infringement of second medical use claims', October 2015

‘English Patents Court Judgement provides much needed guidance on the scope of second medical use claims’, co-author: Matthew Spencer, February 2015

Events

BIO International Convention, San Diego, US, June 2017

BIA Networking Lunch, Cambridge, February 2017

Front Line Genomics, Festival of Genomics, London, January 2017

One Nucleus Cambridge New Therapeutics Forum, Cambridge, September 2016

One Nucleus: ON Helix 2016, Cambridge, June 2016