Serving clients ranging from global conglomerates to technology-rich start-ups, Bristows has the largest patent litigation practice in the UK and the greatest number of highest-ranked practitioners.
“Bristows is the complete package.”
LEGAL 500 2025
Consistently ranked in the top tier in all major directories, the team combines first-rate technical expertise covering every major scientific and engineering discipline with an unrivalled depth and breadth of litigation experience. Our focus is mainly on litigation in the UK Patents Courts and the UPC but we also have decades of experience providing support to clients in worldwide patent disputes helping them to achieve their commercial goals. We have developed unique software solutions to assist our clients store, access and present vast amounts of data.
With over 40 team members doing exclusively patent litigation work, the team includes 14 partners and 16 qualified associates, most of whom have a technical background at degree-level, often at PhD level. Such numbers permit focus on some of the most refined and sophisticated areas of patent law, creating a team brimming with specialist legal and technical expertise. Our success rate in UK litigation is unparalleled – currently exceeding 75% in trials in the English Patents Court. There is good reason that we are described as the “go-to firm for clients wishing to litigate at the UK patent courts” (JUVE 2024).
Our strengths are reflected in the team’s recognition, ranking top in every major legal directory. The number of individuals listed as leaders in their field is the greatest of any firm in the UK. Many have also gained international recognition at the highest level, an indication that the team’s role in handling patent disputes has no borders.
Our expertise in patent disputes is complemented by our frequent collaboration with our colleagues in allied departments specialising closely-related disciplines such as life-sciences regulatory and competition law. Experience has taught us that innovative solutions often emerge from inter-disciplinary collaboration.
Around half of the team’s work relates to international litigation, in both coordination and support roles. In the evolving European patent litigation landscape, clients seeking the very best choose Bristows as part of a bench of top-rated firms. Having 13 patent litigation partners and several of the team’s associates qualified as UPC representatives, Bristows is actively participating in UPC proceedings both on our own and in collaboration with lawyers from other countries.
In the UK, the level of technical detail inherent in High Court patent litigation plays to the team’s strengths, whatever the subject matter. Complex pharmaceutical, biotechnology and SEP/FRAND cases are a key part of the department’s workload, reflecting their prevalence in the court lists, but no technology is unfamiliar. We have increasingly been instructed in licensing disputes, both in the courts and in arbitration proceedings, where we can combine our technical expertise and litigation experience to great effect.
Whilst highly successful in high stakes litigation and arbitration (the latter often in conjunction with colleagues in the commercial & technology disputes team), the value of early and effective dispute resolution through alternative means is well recognised. The team is adept at mediation and settlement negotiations and has considerable experience of some of the rarer forms of ADR, including expert determination, offering comparatively inexpensive and binding solutions where appropriate.
