Jenny Davies

Jenny works with a range of pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device companies. Her unique practice includes negotiating complex, cross-border licensing and collaboration deals, advising on alliance management, and protecting and maintaining her clients’ markets through strategic patent advice and enforcement.

Jenny’s licensing practice focuses on drafting and negotiating license and collaboration agreements for clients, including advising on highly complex, company-transforming transactions, co-promotion and co-development agreements, early-stage research and development agreements, and manufacturing and services agreements.

In her patent practice, she leads UK patent litigation, advises on European Patent Office (EPO) oppositions, and provides extensive guidance on patent analysis and enforcement/defensive strategy. Jenny has coordinated litigation and intellectual property (IP) enforcement in more than 20 countries.

With her biochemistry background and 15 years of experience in the life sciences sector, Jenny understands both the commercial pressures and nuanced technical issues her clients face. She has a special interest in RNA technology stemming from her work during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, where she counselled clients on a broad range of issues from complex collaborations and alliance management to patentability, patent strategy and patent enforcement. Jenny also has considerable experience working with biologics, small molecules and cell therapy.

She is a member of the BioIndustry Association’s IP advisory committee and its supplementary protection certificate (SPC) and exclusivities subcommittee, as well as a regular speaker on patent matters and strategy.

Before joining Cooley, Jenny was the head of the life sciences practice at an international law firm and had a role as acting chief representative officer in Guangzhou, China.

Jenny’s representative matters include:

• Advising a biotechnology company on an in-license of technology with a complex division of territories and indications
• Advising various biotechnology clients in relation to day-to-day agreements, such as confidential disclosure agreements, material transfer agreements, supply and distribution agreements, agreements with contract manufacturing organizations and contract development and manufacturing organizations, and early-stage research collaborations
• Advising AstraZeneca in respect of a number of complex transactions with the University of Oxford (COVID-19 vaccine), Merck, Genzyme and Daiichi Sankyo, totalling in excess of $20 billion*
• Supporting AstraZeneca on its strategic collaboration and license agreement with Quell Therapeutics in respect of engineered T-regulatory cell therapies*
• Advisory work for BioNTech in respect of its COVID-19 vaccine, Comirnaty*
• Advising on Heptares’ (Nxera’s) collaboration with Genentech in respect of a potential first-in-class therapy targeting an undisclosed G protein-coupled receptor ($1 billion)*
• Advising on a collaboration and license agreement between Heptares (Nxera) and Takeda for certain gastrointestinal targets in gut inflammation and motility disorders ($1.2 billion)*
• Supporting GSK in its 400-million-euro deal with MorphoSys*
• Advising on Heptares’ (Nxera’s) discovery-stage collaboration with Eli Lilly in relation to small molecule therapies for diabetes and metabolic disease ($730 million)*
• Advising on Immunocore’s transaction with Genentech for a phase 1-ready bi-specific antibody*
• Advising a leading biotechnology company on a complex renegotiation of a collaboration agreement involving three parties and material solvency concerns*
• Patent advisory, licensing and supply agreements for Brightwake (Advancis Medical) in relation to its innovative wound care products and other medical devices*
• Patent advisory work for Coloplast in respect of its catheter and ostomy products*
• Advising a leading biotechnology company in respect of a complex collaboration and co-commercialisation agreement in relation to a marketed product, along with ongoing alliance management*
• Advising H. Lundbeck in relation to its top-selling anti-depressant enantiomer drug, Escitalopram*
• Patent advisory work and dispute resolution on the first UK patent litigation involving biological therapies for The Kennedy Trust for Rheumatology Research*
• Leading patent litigation for Fujifilm Kyowa Kirin Biologics in a billion-dollar dispute with AbbVie in respect of Humira, in litigation worth 400 million pounds in the UK*
• Negotiating a license in resolution of a patent dispute spanning human and veterinary medicine*
• Providing strategic patent prosecution advice for a leading pharmaceutical company in respect of a novel vaccine*
• Patent analysis and preparations to manage launch risk for numerous late-stage products*

* Representation handled prior to joining Cooley