Brian Cordery

Practice Areas

Since qualifying at Bristows in 1996, Brian’s focus has been on intellectual property dispute resolution. From the start of his career, Brian has been instructed by some of the world’s leading healthcare companies to defend and enforce the patents for their most successful products. With almost three decades of dedication to this area, there is hardly an argument or issue that Brian has not encountered. Since 2005, Brian has continuously handled the world-wide co-ordination of projects to manage the defence of patents and related rights for some of the world’s best-selling medicines ensuring that there is correctness, clarity and consistency in all countries. Brian knows that to succeed in such projects a multi-disciplinary team is required and that it is important to think globally but act locally. Brian’s work has involved numerous disease areas including immunology, oncology, endocrinology, neuroscience, dermatology and cardiology.

Some of Brian’s work highlights include:

- Valsartan – Acting for Novartis in relation to its patents and SPCs for Diovan®/Co-Diovan®, a very successful anti-hypertension medicine. This was a seven year project assisting Novartis with the defence and enforcement of its patents and SPCs/PTEs in over 40 countries. As part of the UK litigation, a reference to the CJEU was made on the scope of SPCs which led to the ruling on C-442/11 which still stands as good law today.

- Imatinib – Acting for Novartis in relation to its patents and SPCs for Glivec® which revolutionised the treatment of certain types of cancer. Over the course of eight years, Brian led the team at Bristows assist Novartis with the co-ordination of the defence and enforcement of IP rights in over 30 countries with a particular focus on challenges to the paediatric extension to the SPC for imatinib in Europe. The validity and infringement of Novartis’ second medical use patents for use of imatinib to treat GIST was also an important part of this project.

- Deferasirox – Acting for Novartis in the defence of its patents and SPCs for Exjade®. This involved UK litigation on challenges to the validity of (i) the paediatric extension granted to Novartis for deferasirox and (ii) a patent to a film-coated tablet for deferasirox as well as co-ordination across Europe including a successful application to the Dutch Court for a pan-European injunction.

- Fremanezumab – Acting for Teva in the defence of a challenge in the English Court to its patents for Ajovy® – a CGRP antibody used to treat migraine and cluster headache.

- Fasinumab – Acting for Teva and Regeneron in the English Patents Court in relation to anti-NGF antibodies being trialled for the treatment of osteoarthritis.

- Fingolimod – Acting for Novartis in relation to its patents for Gilenya® used to treat multiple sclerosis. This included seeking a preliminary injunction from the English Patents Court on a patent application and co-ordination of litigation across Europe.

- Dimethyl fumarate – Acting for Forward Pharma in litigation and EPO oppositions relating to DMF, the active ingredient in Tecfidera® used to treat multiple sclerosis. Forward concluded a settlement with Biogen in January 2017 which included a one-off payment of $1.25bn to Forward.

- Travoprost – Acting for Alcon in the defence of a challenge in the English Patents Court and Court of Appeal to its patents for Travatan® used to treat glaucoma.

- Doggybone DNA – Acting for Touchlight in the defence of an entitlement challenge in the English Patents Court to its patents relating to the in vitro synthesis of DNA.

Brian was named Who’s Who Legal Patent Lawyer of the Year in 2018, 2019 and 2022. Brian is the co–author of an annual review of UK patent cases which is published annually in the CIPA Journal. He also teaches patent law on the Oxford University Diploma on Intellectual Property Law and Practice and is a member of the Exam Board of this Diploma. He is the co-editor of the Kluwer Patent Blog.

Career

MA Law, University of Oxford

Diploma in Intellectual Property Law and Practice, University of Bristol

Qualified 1996

Partner 2004

Admitted in Republic of Ireland 2024

UPC Representative 2024

Publications

Patent Review of the Year