Christopher Leung

Solicitor, Fieldfisher

Christopher is an Associate in the IP Protection and Enforcement Group at Fieldfisher. His experience spans a broad range of IP rights including patents and SPCs, trade marks, copyright, database rights and domain names.

Christopher has a particular interest in litigation in the life sciences field and has experience of patent and SPC proceedings before the UK Intellectual Property Office, Patents Court, Court of Appeal and Court of Justice of the European Union, including acting as lead assistant in Sandoz Ltd & Anor v G.D. Searle LLC & Anor and Master Data Center, Inc. v The Comptroller General of Patents.

Christopher also advises clients on the management of their global trade mark portfolios and the enforcement of their soft IP rights, and has acted in various high profile soft IP disputes including Karen Millen v Karen Millen Fashions Ltd & Anor (trade marks) and 77m Ltd v Ordnance Survey Ltd (copyright and database rights).

Contributed to

1

Biotechnology patents

Practice notes

This Practice Note sets out which biotechnological inventions can and cannot be patented. It refers to Directive 98/44/EC (often known as the Biotechnology Directive) and Schedule A2 to the Patents Act 1977, which permit biotechnological inventions to be patented but provide some important exceptions. These exceptions have been subject to interpretation by the Court of Justice in cases such as Oliver Brüstle v Greenpeace and Monsanto v Cefetra. This Practice Note also considers the exclusions to patentability under Article 52(b) of the European Patent Convention (EPC) and the relevant European Patent Office (EPO) case law, Tomatoes I, Tomatoes II and Broccoli II. Finally, it considers the 2017 European Commission Notice on biotechnological inventions.

Life Sciences