James Horgan

Assistant Managing Counsel at Merck Sharp & Dohme Ltd

James Horgan is Assistant Managing Counsel at Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, NJ, USA. He heads the European Patent Department based in the United Kingdom. He has a degree in chemistry and has practiced extensively in the pharmaceutical, vaccine and biotechnological fields for 25 years supporting research sites in England and Italy. He has wide experience of prosecuting applications before the EPO where he appears in ex parte and inter partes Oral Proceedings. He has filed and prosecuted a large number of SPCs. He has been involved in major multi-jurisdictional litigation in cases relating to Vioxx, Fosamax, Cosopt, Propecia, Rebetol, Isentress and Inegy with major successes before the Dutch, Irish and Malaysian Supreme Courts in cases relating to second medical use claims, the standards for preliminary injunctions and the judicial assessment of subclaims, as well as before the CJEU and EFTA courts in cases relating to parallel imports and negative term SPCs. He is involved in IP policy issues via the IP Federation, where he was President in 2017-18, EFPIA, IFPMA and Business Europe. He has been included in the IAM list of the World’s 300 Leading IP Strategists employed in industry since its inception in 2015, and is also one of Managing Intellectual Property’s Corporate IP Stars.