Bonnie Weiss McLeod

Cooley advised EyeBiotech Limited, a privately held, clinical-stage ophthalmology biotechnology company working to deliver a new generation of therapies for eye diseases, on the close of an extension to its Series A financing, bringing the total raised to date to $130 million.

Cooley advised Jazz Pharmaceuticals on its $1.5 billion acquisition of Celator. The transaction adds the orphan drug VYXEOS which aims to treat AML. Jazz Pharmaceuticals, a Cooley client since 2006, is an international biopharmaceutical company focused on improving patients' lives by identifying, developing and commercializing meaningful products that address unmet medical needs.

Few patent cases make it all the way to the Supreme Court. Even fewer involve a dispute in which a company's very survival is at stake. Since 2011, our client Gevo, a pioneer in the biofuels industry, and Butamax, a joint venture of giants BP and DuPont, had been trading blows, filing close to a dozen patent suits against each other. Butamax initially brought suit in the District of Delaware in an attempt to knock Gevo out of the emerging market for isobutanol alternative energy. In that case, the court granted summary judgment of noninfringement in favor of Gevo, prompting Butamax to appeal. On appeal, the Federal Circuit rejected the district court's claim construction and issued a new claim construction that vacated the noninfringement ruling.

In response, Cooley took the case to the US Supreme Court and, in January 2015, the high court granted our petition for writ of certiorari, vacating the judgment against Gevo and remanding the case back to the Federal Circuit for further consideration. This decision, and numerous other victories including key summary judgment victories, paved the path for Gevo to reach a favorable global patent cross-license and settlement agreement with Butamax. The agreement forms a partnership between the two biofuel companies aimed at leveraging one another's technology.

Cooley handles ongoing patent counseling and prosecution work for Native Microbials, helping to build its global patent portfolio, including obtaining key US patents covering various microbial products for improving animal health and patents protecting the company’s process for identifying microbial strains. Native Microbials’ patented platform for microbial identification transforms the analysis of microbial community systems away from the ubiquitous statistically predictive approach practiced today, to a more biologically relevant and functionally descriptive approach, which is yielding industry leading insights into microbial solutions for animal health.

In addition, Cooley recently advised the company on its $46 million Series B financing round.

Cooley advised the underwriters on Vascular Biogenics' initial public offering. Vascular Biogenics is an Israel-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company committed to the discovery, development and commercialization of first-in-class treatments for cancer and immune-inflammatory diseases. The company now trades on the Nasdaq Global Stock Market under the symbol "VBLT."

Deutsche Bank Securities acted as the sole book running manager for the offering. JMP Securities and Oppenheimer & Co. acted as co-managers for the offering.