Steven is a patent litigation lawyer with over 10 years’ experience in the life sciences sector. Steven has spent a significant amount of his career in the in-house patent litigation teams of leading innovative and generic pharmaceutical companies, which gives him a unique perspective on complex cross-border patent disputes.

Prior to working in-house, Steven trained and qualified into the patent litigation team at Bristows where he assisted in the coordination of the worldwide defence and enforcement of patents relating to some of the world’s best-selling pharmaceuticals.

Steven has a particular interest in issues relating to SPCs, preliminary injunction practice and procedure, second medical use patents and the intersection of IP and competition law.

Some of Steven’s work highlights include:

• Sitagliptin/Metformin – led the European litigation strategy which culminated in the CJEU decision in the conjoined cases of Teva Finland (C-119/22) and Merck (C-149/22), a landmark decision concerning the interpretation of Article 3 of the SPC Regulation.
• Testosterone Undecanoate – revocation proceedings before the English and German Courts concerning a patent relating to the injectable hypogonadism medicine Nebido® ([2023] EWHC 1836 (Pat))
• Sorafenib – preliminary injunction and revocation action proceedings concerning a patent relating to the oncology medicine Nexavar® in a number of European countries including the UK ([2021] EWHC 2690 (Pat))
• Valsartan – Acting for Novartis in relation to its patents and SPCs for Diovan®/Co-Diovan®, a very successful anti-hypertension medicine. As part of the UK litigation, a reference to the CJEU was made on the scope of SPCs which led to the ruling in C-442/11 which still stands as good law today.
• Imatinib – Acting for Novartis in relation to its patents and SPCs for Glivec® which revolutionised the treatment of certain types of cancer.