Powell Gilbert forges full steam ahead into the UPC market

Powell Gilbert has 15 UPC representatives in its Dublin office and only one in London. It is clear the IP boutique wants to make a big play for the UPC. But in terms of where the firm sees its main business in the future, and where the firm actually comes from, this figure only tells half the story.

Powell Gilbert is an archetypal UK IP firm. Its main office is located on the famed Fleet Street in London, the former home of many British publishing houses. Fleet Street is still synonymous with the British press, even though the newspapers vacated their opulent buildings, just opposite the Powell Gilbert office, in the 80s.

In the main, law firms took their place. Powell Gilbert moved in in the early 2000s. For many years, founding partners Tim Powell, Penny Gilbert, Simon Ayrton, Zoe Butler, and Alex Wilson worked a few streets south at Bristows. In 2007, however, they decided to leave Bristows and set up on their own. This was by no means a disadvantage for either side — both have held a spot at the top of the UK patent litigation market since 2019. And both IP boutiques had ambitious plans for their UPC litigation business early on.

Intensive coordination

To start with, Powell Gilbert had ten litigators and a handful of clients in 2007. Even then, Human Genome Sciences, Yead, and Monsanto were among its first clients. Since then, the trajectory has been fast and steep. Today, the firm, which advises broadly in IP law but has a strong focus on patent litigation, has 15 partners and 19 associates. Long-standing clients include the pharmaceutical company Biogen, medical device manufacturers Edwards Lifesciences, and Coloplast, not to mention the tobacco and cigarette multinational Philip Morris and warehouse robot manufacturer Ocado.

The patent team is at home in multiple technologies and sectors, but its best-known strength is in life sciences. Penny Gilbert is one of Europe’s foremost litigators for pharmaceutical originators. BioNTech retained her team for its disputes with CureVac and Moderna over mRNA patents. Gilbert had previously coordinated the German biotech company’s preparations for potential attacks by competitors in Europe.

Another team led by the young partner Siddharth Kusumakar has been coordinating Edwards Lifesciences’ dispute with Meril Life Sciences over heart valves for years. The team led the proceedings in the UK and coordinated all proceedings with the sole exception of those in the US.

The Powell Gilbert team ©Powell Gilbert

Powell Gilbert maintains close relationships with various law firms in Europe, which it deploys in varying constellations. The dispute between Edwards and Meril has long since reached the UPC. Powell Gilbert is working with a German and French Bird & Bird team, as well as the patent attorneys of Thum & Partner and the Scandinavian law firm Gullikson.

The Irish route

It is precisely the intensive coordination work in many pan-European cases that has made Powell Gilbert one of the leading outfits in the London market, but also a well-known name throughout Europe. With the launch of the UPC, it was important to secure this position, as the new court has fundamentally altered the business of European law firms.

Powell Gilbert decided to play an active role in the UPC. However, this has proved difficult since the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union and thus the UPC project. UK lawyers are not entitled to register as UPC representatives. Powell Gilbert, like many London law firms, therefore took the route via Dublin. Legal professionals that could prove Irish ancestry applied for Irish admission to the Bar.

This led to Powell Gilbert opening a second office in Dublin in 2023. All partners here are admitted as UPC representatives, although they work predominantly from the London office on Fleet Street.

Plethora of UPC clients

At the UPC, the partners also represent AsusTech concerning mobile communications and AIM Sport Vision concerning electronic perimeter advertising in sports stadiums. But the client list also includes smaller companies such as City Glass and Glazing and Bhagat Group, which the team is representing in UPC cases concerning a glazing system and textile machinery respectively.

In addition to the UPC launch and the opening of its second office in the Irish capital, 2023 was also a year of significant change for the firm in other respects. After a long period of preparation, name partner Tim Powell left the partnership — initially to take some time out. A few weeks ago, however, he made a surprise return to the London legal scene and joined the US law firm Morgan Lewis to set up a patent litigation practice. By this time, however, Powell Gilbert already had a considerable number of cases at the UPC under its belt.