Carpmaels & Ransford LLP

Managing Partner: Hugh Goodfellow

Number of Partners: 33

Number of other UK fee-earners: 130

CONTACTS

Managing Partner: Hugh Goodfellow

Chemistry: Matthew Georgiou

Dispute Resolution: Ian Kirby

Engineering & Tech: John Brunner

Life Sciences Biotechnology: Mark Chapman

Trade Marks: Roger Lush

Transactions: Jake Marshall

THE FIRM:

Carpmaels & Ransford LLP is a leader in the European IP market, having driven innovation in the industry for over 200 years. From our offices in London, Munich, and Dublin, we manage many of the world’s leading IP portfolios, including those protecting our clients’ most commercially valuable products and services.

The firm is best known for providing cutting-edge IP advice to innovators, particularly for patents in EPO opposition, strategic prosecution, Unified Patent Court (UPC) actions, and in UK and pan-European patent and SPC litigation. It is unique in offering a truly integrated service, managing clients’ intellectual property from inception to litigation and one of the few firms that can use the same team to handle parallel disputes in the EPO, UPC and UK courts, while also coordinating national actions across Europe. The firm has mixed teams of European patent attorneys and litigators that can advise on how best to use the UPC in particular, as over 90 of the litigators and patent attorneys have full UPC representation rights as registered UPC Representatives. It is perfectly positioned to represent clients at this Court and in 2024 it led on the first successful revocation action (and highest value case) to be filed before the Central Division of the Court.

The firm has one of Europe’s largest intellectual property teams serving blue-chip clients across the globe. The firm’s attorneys have considerable technical knowledge, bringing together experience from industry-leading companies, academic research at leading universities, and extensive patent expertise in the areas of engineering and tech, chemistry and materials, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, supplementary protection certificates and information communications technology and standards.

As well as advising on the acquisition and licensing of IP rights, and other IP focused agreements, (such as development and collaboration agreements), the Transactions Team manages multi-jurisdictional patent/trade mark assignment recordal projects, provides specialist advice on the transfer of priority rights and assists clients with the restoration of registered IP rights around the world.

Carpmaels & Ransford represents clients across a range of sectors, with a key focus on serving healthcare clients across the full spectrum of technical areas, supported by all of its practice groups. The firm’s various patent attorney groups are the go-to teams in their fields. In Life Sciences, the Biotech group handles large molecule therapeutics, and the Chemistry group handles small molecule therapeutics, nutraceuticals and consumer healthcare; in these areas, they represent their clients in matters relating to 49 of the top 200 brand name pharmaceuticals as ranked by their sales in the year 2022, representing collective retail sales of more than $185 billion. Currently, the firm act for eight of the top ten pharmaceutical companies and they have been integral to the protection of just short of 50 of the top 200 brand name drugs in 2023. In Engineering & Tech, the firm is known for its deep expertise in medtech, as well as supporting a burgeoning group of clients in the energy sector. This is another core area of expertise within the firm.

The Carpmaels & Ransford multidisciplinary team of scientists and engineers with experience in organic chemistry, biochemistry, materials, electro-mechanical engineering and IT/software, ensures that they are well placed to advise clients on protecting new technology in the energy field particularly battery technology.