Life Sciences
Our expertise
Our expertise
We have developed a strong compliance, contracts, and litigation expertise that extends to all fields relating to medicinal products for human use, veterinary drugs, medical devices, food supplements, but also biocides and phytopharmaceutical products. Our horizontal approach allows us to set up bilingual, cross-disciplinary teams of legal advisors and trial lawyers who provide advice and assistance to pharmaceutical and veterinary companies (among the world’s top 10) as well as to medical device manufacturers, insurers, health product distributors, medical laboratories, health care professionals and establishments, and specialized PR agencies.
What we do
We help the life sciences industry with their compliance issues:
- We advise industry professionals on market access, MA filing and acquisition, and reimbursement procedures.
- We help them with health product qualification procedures.
- We help them to promote their health products.
We help them to draft and negotiate commercial and industrial contracts in regulated areas:
- We draft and negotiate file acquisition, licensing, co-marketing, co-promotion, manufacturing and supply contracts.
- We draft and negotiate distribution and agency contracts as well as contracts for the outsourcing of sales forces.
We advise industrial groups and distribution companies bidding for hospital procurement contracts
We conduct transactions for the sale and acquisition of pharmaceutical companies or their divisions in collaboration with the law firm’s Corporate and Employment teams
We assist clients investigated for unfair competition by the DGCCRF
We represent life sciences professionals:
- We represent clients before the civil, commercial, administrative, and criminal courts in a variety of cases: price cutting, adding a product on the list of reimbursable drugs, proceedings based on the French “DMOS” act regulating relations between businesses and the medical profession, unfair competition actions, DGCCRF investigations, breach or termination of contract.
- We represent clients before professional and professional associations’ tribunals.
- We represent clients before both the ordinary courts and the CRCI mediation commissions in matters of medical liability and industrial risk (product liability) with the help of private experts.
Among our files
Health product promotion
- Counsel to the prevailing party in proceedings where for the first time an administrative court reversed a decision by which the ANSM had refuse to authorize an advertisement
Clinical trials / Medical liability
- Counsel to an insurance company in litigation proceedings following medical biology research (coordinating the work of the sponsor’s and investigator’s lawyers)
- Organization of training sessions for the employees of a pharmaceutical company facing a preliminary criminal police investigation
Commercial litigation
- Numerous cases of sudden termination of established business relationships between pharmaceutical companies and distributors and service providers
- Litigation concerning commercial agents and sales forces
- Litigation concerning the qualification of a health product (medical device, biocide, drug) and its consequences on its promotion and sales
- Appeal to the ANSM to challenge the name of a new drug presenting similarities to the name of a generic, followed by an action for infringement by the new drug’s final name
- Unfair competition litigation following scientific communications by a pharmaceutical company concerning a veterinary drug
Industrial risk and liability
- Management of the consequences of the closure of a pharmaceutical establishment manufacturing soft capsules targeted by malicious acts
- Litigation following the withdrawal of breast implants, hip prostheses, and intraocular lenses
Company law / M&A / Reorganizations
- Corporate and employment advice to a French pharmaceutical company undergoing a reorganization
- Structuration of the capital of one of the leading European biology laboratories in compliance with medical biology regulations
Distribution / Competition
- Negotiations with a US-American company for the exclusive worldwide licensing of a molecule to a European pharmaceutical company
- Validation of the pricing, commercial, and marketing policies of several leaders in the life sciences industry (compliance programmes)
- Auditing of a major industry player and preparation of its teams in view of an unfair competition investigation by the DGCCRF