Dr. Anna Wolters-Höhne

In my 20 years as a patent litigator, I have been representing clients from all industry sectors in international patent disputes. With a particular focus on life sciences clients, I have been in volved in numerous landmark patent cases and important innovator vs. innovator disputes.

Advising our national and international clients from a variety of sectors in patent law, my practice focuses on patent infringement and damages proceedings, nullity actions and compulsory licence cases before the German courts as well as opposition proceedings before the European Patent Office and UPC advice.

With my significant litigation expertise, I have been able to win numerous landmark preliminary injunction proceedings for our clients, particularly in the pharmaceutical and medical devices field.

My practice covers the coordination of large cases across jurisdictions and practices with a broad international network of counsel, patent attorneys and experts in the technical, economic and legal fields.

My advice includes the development of offensive as well as defense patent strategies for clients from all industry sectors.

My clients appreciate my responsiveness, economic understanding and reliability as well as my dedication to winning their case. For me, success is a team effort: My "one team approach" includes not only my highly qualified team here in my office, but also each and every one who works on the case globally, whether it is a lawyer, patent attorney or assistant from our Bird & Bird network or from a competitor. Most importantly, the client with his expertise is the centre of it. We focus on using all our energy to win the case together as one team.

• Advising multinational pharmaceutical companies on various aspects of patent law, representation in numerous patent infringement proceedings, patent entitlement, damages and preliminary injunction proceedings as well as validity proceedings, including disputes on blockbuster products, small molecules, biologics and biosimilars. I regularly coordinate multijurisdictional disputes as lead counsel advising on offensive and defensive patent strategies in typical originator vs. generics/biosimilar cases and also disputes between originators.
• Representing US pharma company innovator vs. innovator patent disputes relating to antiviral drugs, including aspects of equivalent infringement.
• Representing a pharma client in several SPC disputes, in landmark cases developing new case law on second medical use patents as well as advising on orphan drug cases, various regulatory issues including data protection and patent law aspects in the context of pharmaceutical procurement law.
• Representation of US medical device company in compulsory licence proceedings before the Federal Patent Court.
• Representing Japanese and US medical device entities in various patent infringement proceedings and a series of preliminary injunction cases relating to stent products including the involvement in validity proceedings.
• Representing global chemical company on a series of patent infringement and invalidity actions relating to various chemical products for catalytic applications in the automotive sector.
• Representing Chinese energy storage solutions company in patent infringement proceedings.

• Landmark preliminary injunction cases from the life sciences sector I have been involved in:
• Higher Regional Court Düsseldorf, I-2 U 48/15, I-2 U 49/15 & I-2 U 50/15, 21 January 16 – Balloon Expandable Stents re urgency requirement when waiting for second instance confirmation of patent's validity before filing preliminary injunction request
• Regional Court Düsseldorf, 4c O 46/16, 12 December 2016 – Fulvestrant re standard of validity review in light of negative preliminary opinion of Federal Patent Court
• Higher Regional Court Düsseldorf, I-W 6/17, 5 May 2017 – Fulvestrant re lacking urgency when only enforcing second medical use patent after failure of preceding preliminary injunction proceedings with other patent against same products and criteria for infringement of second medical use claims lacking a manifest preparation for the patented purpose
• Higher Regional Court Munich, 6 U 3039/16, 18 May 2017 – Pemetrexed re equivalent infringement
• Higher Regional Court Düsseldorf, I-2 U 30/17, 1 March 2018 – Dexmeditomidine re criteria for infringement of second medical use claims
• Higher Regional Court Düsseldorf, I-2 U 59/18 & I-2 U 62/18, 15 March 2019 – Ezetimibe/Simvastatin re invalidity of combination SPC following first SPC on monotherapy based on Art. 3c) of EU SPC Regulation and standard of review in potential case for referral to the Court of Justice of the European Union.
• Regional Courts Düsseldorf and Munich, 4c O 56/20, 21 O 11636/20, 21 O 12266/20 - Cinacalcet re urgency requirement in preliminary injunction proceedings with respect to timelines for testing products for infringement