Powell Gilbert beat stiff competition from other leading IP law firms to be announced the winner of The Lawyer’s IP Team of the Year 2016.
The Lawyer commented:

“Powell Gilbert secured a hard-fought High Court victory for client Actavis against Pfizer in a case described by judges as a “David and Goliath story”. The case had an estimated value of over £500m. The battle centred on Pfizers’s patent for the use of the drug pregabalin. 
The company owned a second patent for treating pain, but the patent on the active ingredient itself for its primary use had expired. 
This case required an innovative and fast-moving strategy as this was new legal territory, which straddled both patent validity and infringement, as well as commercial considerations and wider public policy issues. 
The issue of how medicine is distributed to patients in the NHS was at the heart of the case, going well beyond straightforward patent litigation.”

For further information, please see The Lawyer case study.