We are a specialist firm of pharma and biotech patent attorneys. Between us we have run IP inside large pharmaceutical companies, in oncology, autoimmune disease and neuroscience, and we have worked in private practice too. Fractional IP counsel is how we make that experience available to companies that need.
On this page: Why fractional · Our experience · What we cover · The team · Deals · Landscape and FTO · A typical month · AI tools · How it works · FAQs
People call it different things: a fractional head of IP, an outsourced head of IP for life sciences, fractional patent counsel. What you get is one of our patent attorneys working as your head of IP, with the rest of Evolve behind them: our paralegals, our docketing and document systems and the AI tools we have built. Nobody here works alone, so you get more than one opinion when something matters. And because Evolve is a full-service patent firm rather than a consultancy, the drafting, prosecution and any opposition or appeal can sit with the same people who set the strategy.
The CEO or CSO is head of IP in all but name and the next financing will go through the portfolio properly. We take the role from the start, for the days a month the pipeline needs. More on start-ups.
The head of IP has left or is stretched, a partnering process is coming, and there is more senior work than one person can do. We step in as an outsourced head of IP, or alongside the person you have.
We take the overflow, cover leave, or give a second senior opinion on a big decision, with no settling-in period. See our work with established pharma.
Global filing strategy, regulatory exclusivities, life-cycle management, trade secrets, oppositions and litigation support, portfolio consolidation.
Getting the portfolio ready before a partner looks at it, negotiating IP terms, and explaining the position to boards and investors.
Knowing the landscape around your technology and keeping it current, with the Ammonite Chart for boards and investors.
Invention capture, publication review, portfolio reviews, board updates and a named attorney your scientists can call.
Franklin, Cassandra, Darwin, Popper, Albert and the Ammonite Chart, built by our attorneys and included for fractional clients.
A named patent director, agreed days per month, running within weeks, scaled up or down as the pipeline changes.
The patent work sits with an outside firm and the CEO or CSO is head of IP in all but name. That works until a financing, when someone will go through the portfolio properly. We take the head of IP role from the start, for the days a month the pipeline needs, so it is in order before anyone asks. More on how we work with start-ups.
Programmes are moving, a partnering process is on the horizon, and there is more senior work than one person can do. We can step in as an outsourced head of IP for life sciences, or work alongside the person you have, for as long as it is useful.
A good in-house team with too much on. We take the overflow, cover leave, or give a second senior opinion on a big decision. There is no settling-in period, because we have done the job. See our work with established pharma.
A pharma patent stands or falls on its data. Whether a claim to a new antibody, a dosing regimen or a cell therapy survives examination comes down to what the experiments showed, how the sequences were defined, and whether the examiner finds the effect plausible. You need attorneys who understand the science as well as the law. Ours have PhDs in immunology and chemistry, spent years inside pharma R&D, and work every week on small molecules, biologics, antibody-drug conjugates, cell and gene therapy and RNA, across oncology, autoimmune disease and neuroscience.
In practice that means:
In pharma and biotech the patents are most of what the company is worth. Value is built years before any revenue, every financing and partnering round turns on the IP, and the work arrives in bursts around those events rather than steadily through the year.
A full-time head of IP is hard to justify while the pipeline is small, and an outside firm is rarely in the room when the decisions get made. Fractional IP counsel sits in between: in-house experience, on the days you need it, from attorneys the pharma partners and investors across the table already know.
Where to file, when, and in what form, decided against the commercial plan rather than out of habit. The jurisdictional differences matter more in pharma than in most fields: evidence thresholds at the EPO and the USPTO, grace periods, divisional practice, and the way China and Japan handle biologics and dosing claims. We have run global strategy for on-market biologics and for neuroscience, cell therapy and autoimmune pipelines.
From Evolve Insights:
When do you file for a drug combination invention? (T592/24)
European file history in US claim interpretation (K-fee v Nespresso)
Patents are only one layer of protection on a product. SPCs and patent term extension, data and market exclusivity, orphan and paediatric exclusivity all need planning alongside them, and the timing between them is where products gain or lose years.
From Evolve Insights:
Patents versus regulatory exclusivity for cell therapies
SPCs: CJEU asked to revisit Santen
We put a loss-of-exclusivity date against every asset and start the life-cycle work early. Formulation, dosing, new indications, combinations, manufacturing: each gets filed when the data is there to support it and there is a commercial reason to do so.
From Evolve Insights:
A new mode of administration is a new medical use (T 0295/22)
Phase III results sink a second medical use patent (T 0816/22)
Some of the most valuable IP in a biotech is never filed. We help you decide what to patent and what to keep as know-how, then put the policies, access controls and agreements in place so it stays protected through collaborations and as people come and go.
From Evolve Insights:
The benefits and pitfalls of drug manufacturing IP (T 2543/22)
Pitfalls of cell therapy manufacturing IP (T 0868/23)
Oppositions at the EPO, and litigation support alongside external counsel in the UK, Europe and the US, including the UPC. We have run oppositions from both sides, which is useful when preparing a portfolio for the day someone challenges it.
From Evolve Insights:
CAR-T cell therapy litigation at the UPC (2seventy bio v J&J)
EBA leaves late interveners stranded (G2/24)
Portfolios get untidy, particularly after a licence or an acquisition. We go through the whole estate, rationalise the families, let go of cases that no longer earn their keep, and get everything onto one system, so the money goes where the value is.
From Evolve Insights:
The great consolidation: Big pharma buys the technology, not just the drug
Why patents matter in the pharma industry
Where to file, when, and in what form, decided against the commercial plan rather than out of habit. The jurisdictional differences matter more in pharma than in most fields: evidence thresholds at the EPO and the USPTO, grace periods, divisional practice, and the way China and Japan handle biologics and dosing claims. We have run global strategy for on-market biologics and for neuroscience, cell therapy and autoimmune pipelines.
From Evolve Insights:
When do you file for a drug combination invention? (T592/24)
European file history in US claim interpretation (K-fee v Nespresso)
Patents are only one layer of protection on a product. SPCs and patent term extension, data and market exclusivity, orphan and paediatric exclusivity all need planning alongside them, and the timing between them is where products gain or lose years.
From Evolve Insights:
Patents versus regulatory exclusivity for cell therapies
SPCs: CJEU asked to revisit Santen
We put a loss-of-exclusivity date against every asset and start the life-cycle work early. Formulation, dosing, new indications, combinations, manufacturing: each gets filed when the data is there to support it and there is a commercial reason to do so.
From Evolve Insights:
A new mode of administration is a new medical use (T 0295/22)
Phase III results sink a second medical use patent (T 0816/22)
Some of the most valuable IP in a biotech is never filed. We help you decide what to patent and what to keep as know-how, then put the policies, access controls and agreements in place so it stays protected through collaborations and as people come and go.
From Evolve Insights:
The benefits and pitfalls of drug manufacturing IP (T 2543/22)
Pitfalls of cell therapy manufacturing IP (T 0868/23)
Oppositions at the EPO, and litigation support alongside external counsel in the UK, Europe and the US, including the UPC. We have run oppositions from both sides, which is useful when preparing a portfolio for the day someone challenges it.
From Evolve Insights:
CAR-T cell therapy litigation at the UPC (2seventy bio v J&J)
EBA leaves late interveners stranded (G2/24)
Portfolios get untidy, particularly after a licence or an acquisition. We go through the whole estate, rationalise the families, let go of cases that no longer earn their keep, and get everything onto one system, so the money goes where the value is.
From Evolve Insights:
The great consolidation: Big pharma buys the technology, not just the drug
Why patents matter in the pharma industry
We have run IP due diligence and negotiated IP terms on both sides of licensing, collaboration and financing deals, in autoimmune disease, cell therapy, oncology and neuroscience. That tells you a lot about how a portfolio is read when there is money on the table.
We help you:
We map the patent landscape around your technology and keep it up to date as your programme and your competitors move, from an early view to support an investment decision through to a closer look at one specific risk. The Ammonite Chart is how we show it. It draws a company’s patent estate, or a whole competitive field, in a single picture, each case running from priority to expiry. Boards and investors understand it without a briefing, which is why we use it.
We use it for:
A health-check of what you already have against the R&D and clinical plan. Then layered filings on the product, the protocol, dose, formulation, manufacturing and the platform, timed so the application goes in before the data readout, the poster or the deal announcement, and the pending cases that matter pushed through quickly.
Invention capture sessions with the scientists. Manuscripts, posters, abstracts and grant applications reviewed before they go out, with our AI tools doing the first pass so nothing waits on us. Clean inventorship and data records, and a trade secret policy that people actually follow.
Sequence freedom-to-operate analysis and competitor monitoring for every programme and modality, with the landscape kept current as the field moves. The IP terms in collaboration, licence and supply agreements managed as they run, so the chain of title stays clean and nothing is signed away by accident.
Board and investor updates with the Ammonite Chart and a plain account of how each lead asset is protected. IP input into partnering, financing and due diligence. A named senior attorney your scientists and leadership can call, in-person visits where they help, and paralegal, docketing and deadline support included.
In practice, fractional IP counsel looks like this:
Keeping the portfolio in line with the science
Capturing what the scientists are generating
Watching the field
Supporting the business
Franklin reads manuscripts, posters, grant applications and lab reports before they go out. It flags anything that would cost you a filing if published, and it picks up inventions the scientists had not noticed. Publication sign-off that keeps up with the lab.
Cassandra reviews the IP terms in research collaborations, licences, MTAs and CDAs against your strategy, and shows you where ownership, background IP, publication rights or field definitions need attention before you sign.
The Ammonite Chart draws your patent estate, or a competitor’s, in one picture, with each case running from priority to expiry and rings marking the current year and loss of exclusivity. It is the chart we take into board meetings.
Darwin drafts pharma and biotech claim sets and specification sections from your data and examples, modality by modality, from small molecules through to sequence claims for biologics and cell therapies. Our attorneys shape and finish the draft, which means a filing can be ready in days when a publication or a deal makes it urgent.
Popper reads the examiner’s objections, the data in your specification and the prosecution history across the family, then prepares the response, with the differences between the EPO, the USPTO and the Asian offices built in. It keeps prosecution in line with the global strategy at a cost an early-stage company can manage.
Albert checks claims against the specification for basis and support, maps each embodiment to its experimental data, and assesses novelty and inventive step against the prior art. It is the analysis we run on your own portfolio, and on assets you are thinking of licensing in, before a diligence team does.
Franklin reads manuscripts, posters, grant applications and lab reports before they go out. It flags anything that would cost you a filing if published, and it picks up inventions the scientists had not noticed. Publication sign-off that keeps up with the lab.
Cassandra reviews the IP terms in research collaborations, licences, MTAs and CDAs against your strategy, and shows you where ownership, background IP, publication rights or field definitions need attention before you sign.
The Ammonite Chart draws your patent estate, or a competitor’s, in one picture, with each case running from priority to expiry and rings marking the current year and loss of exclusivity. It is the chart we take into board meetings.
Darwin drafts pharma and biotech claim sets and specification sections from your data and examples, modality by modality, from small molecules through to sequence claims for biologics and cell therapies. Our attorneys shape and finish the draft, which means a filing can be ready in days when a publication or a deal makes it urgent.
Popper reads the examiner’s objections, the data in your specification and the prosecution history across the family, then prepares the response, with the differences between the EPO, the USPTO and the Asian offices built in. It keeps prosecution in line with the global strategy at a cost an early-stage company can manage.
Albert checks claims against the specification for basis and support, maps each embodiment to its experimental data, and assesses novelty and inventive step against the prior art. It is the analysis we run on your own portfolio, and on assets you are thinking of licensing in, before a diligence team does.
Fractional IP counsel clients have access to these tools and the rest of the Evolve AI suite. They are built on frontier models from Anthropic and Google, nothing is trained on client data and nothing is retained, and a qualified patent attorney reviews every output.
A pharma patent stands or falls on its data, so you need attorneys who understand the science as well as the law. Ours have PhDs in immunology and chemistry, spent years inside pharma R&D, and work every week on small molecules, biologics, antibody-drug conjugates, cell and gene therapy and RNA, across oncology, autoimmune disease and neuroscience. In pharma the patents are most of what the company is worth, value is built years before revenue, and the work comes in bursts around financings and deals. That is why fractional counsel fits life sciences so well.
Our team has:
We have also stayed with deals after signing, which is how you learn which IP positions hold up.
Life-cycle patents secured in the US, Europe, China and Japan, which supported three further Phase 3 programmes in new indications.
IP due diligence and term negotiation on the buyer’s side of an autoimmune cell therapy deal and a multi-specific antibody platform collaboration.
Diligence and negotiations for the whole estate, preclinical to late-stage, across gene therapy, small molecule and antibody assets.
Including the IP work on a $150 million non-dilutive financing and an in vivo CAR-T licence.
Platform technologies, clinical-stage assets and on-market products, with patent term extension and SPC strategy built in.
Small molecules, biologics, cell and gene therapy and drug delivery, in oncology, autoimmune disease and neuroscience, which need very different IP strategies.
Founded Evolve in 2021. European, UK and Australian patent attorney, with more than 20 years in-house and in private practice in pharma and life sciences. Licensing, due diligence, SPCs and contentious work. Ranked in Legal 500, IP STARS and IAM Patent 1000. Profile
Lead IP counsel to a Nasdaq-listed cell therapy company. Before Evolve, IP lead for AstraZeneca’s neuroscience department and its biopharma cell therapy group. Cell and gene therapy, biologics, RNA and neuroscience. Editor of the CIPA Guide to the Patents Acts and a regular IPKat author. Profile
Fifteen years in pharma and biotech, in-house and in private practice, at companies large and small. Freedom to operate, IP risk and due diligence. Profile
Evolve Intellectual Property is a firm of UK and European patent attorneys based in Cambridge, working only in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology.
Good at filing and prosecution, and the right choice for discrete pieces of work. What a firm at arm’s length does not give you is someone in your management meetings who owns the strategy.
The right answer once the pipeline justifies it. Until it does, fractional counsel gives you the same seniority at the scale you need, and when the time comes we will help you recruit and hand over.
The in-house role, done by people who have held it, for the days you need. Strategy and execution come from the same team and the cost tracks the pipeline. We are a full-service patent firm, so drafting, prosecution, oppositions and appeals can sit with us too, which a lone consultant cannot offer.
A qualified patent attorney who works inside your company for an agreed number of days, doing what an in-house head of IP does: strategy, portfolio management, deal support and the everyday questions from your scientists. The difference from using a firm is that the attorney is part of the team rather than a supplier.
A senior pharma head of IP in the UK costs well into six figures once salary, bonus, benefits and recruitment are added up, and an early-stage company rarely needs that person five days a week. Fractional IP counsel is priced on the days you use. An early-stage biotech typically pays a fraction of a full-time cost and increases the days as the programmes advance.
No. Evolve Intellectual Property is a firm of UK and European patent attorneys in Cambridge, working only in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. The US company Evolve IP is unrelated to us.
Broadly three. Keep an outside firm and have the CEO or CSO manage it, which works until the volume or the stakes outgrow them. Hire a junior patent attorney or IP manager, which gives you capacity but not the judgement a financing or a licence needs. Or bring in fractional IP counsel, a senior attorney who has done the in-house job, for an agreed number of days a month. Most companies we work with come to us from the first option, and a few from the second.
Yes, and most clients do, at least to begin with. We act as your in-house head of IP, which means we instruct and manage your outside attorneys the way an in-house team would, and they usually get better instructions and a clearer strategy to work to as a result. Where it makes sense we can take on the drafting and prosecution ourselves, but that is your decision rather than a condition.
We start with the business rather than the patents: where the pipeline is, what the next twelve months hold, who the likely partners and investors are. Then a review of the portfolio and the outside counsel arrangements, usually with the Ammonite Chart to show the estate at a glance. By the end of the first month you will have a written IP strategy, a view on what to file, drop and defer, and an agreed number of days a month from there.
We agree a number of days per month and review it with you every quarter, or sooner if something changes. If a financing or a partnering process needs more of us for a few months, the days go up, and they come back down afterwards. We would rather you stayed because the work is useful than because a contract says so.
We are regulated patent attorneys, so the professional duties of confidentiality and conflict checking apply to us as they would to any firm, and we run a conflict check before any engagement starts. Because we work in a narrow field we take this seriously: we tell you at the outset if we act for anyone near your space, and we agree the conflict position with you in writing before we begin.
Yes, on the review and analysis work, which is part of why we can do more in the same number of days. The tools are our own, built by our attorneys on frontier models from Anthropic and Google under enterprise terms. Nothing is used to train a model, nothing is retained, and a qualified patent attorney checks every output before it reaches you. Our professional obligations apply to AI work exactly as they do to the rest. There is more on how we think about this in our article on AI and confidentiality.
A qualified patent attorney who works inside your company for an agreed number of days, doing what an in-house head of IP does: strategy, portfolio management, deal support and the everyday questions from your scientists. The difference from using a firm is that the attorney is part of the team rather than a supplier.
Yes. One of our patent directors acts as your head of IP, reports to your leadership team and brings the rest of Evolve with them.
A senior pharma head of IP in the UK costs well into six figures once salary, bonus, benefits and recruitment are added up, and an early-stage company rarely needs that person five days a week. Fractional IP counsel is priced on the days you use. An early-stage biotech typically pays a fraction of a full-time cost and increases the days as the programmes advance.
Usually the CEO or CSO manages an outside firm. That works until a financing, a partnering process or a freedom-to-operate question needs senior attention, and at that point the groundwork is often not there. Fractional IP counsel gives you the senior attention without the hire, and gets the groundwork done before the deal rather than during it.
No. Evolve Intellectual Property is a firm of UK and European patent attorneys in Cambridge, working only in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. The US company Evolve IP is unrelated to us.
Broadly three. Keep an outside firm and have the CEO or CSO manage it, which works until the volume or the stakes outgrow them. Hire a junior patent attorney or IP manager, which gives you capacity but not the judgement a financing or a licence needs. Or bring in fractional IP counsel, a senior attorney who has done the in-house job, for an agreed number of days a month. Most companies we work with come to us from the first option, and a few from the second.
Yes, and most clients do, at least to begin with. We act as your in-house head of IP, which means we instruct and manage your outside attorneys the way an in-house team would, and they usually get better instructions and a clearer strategy to work to as a result. Where it makes sense we can take on the drafting and prosecution ourselves, but that is your decision rather than a condition.
We start with the business rather than the patents: where the pipeline is, what the next twelve months hold, who the likely partners and investors are. Then a review of the portfolio and the outside counsel arrangements, usually with the Ammonite Chart to show the estate at a glance. By the end of the first month you will have a written IP strategy, a view on what to file, drop and defer, and an agreed number of days a month from there.
We agree a number of days per month and review it with you every quarter, or sooner if something changes. If a financing or a partnering process needs more of us for a few months, the days go up, and they come back down afterwards. We would rather you stayed because the work is useful than because a contract says so.
We are regulated patent attorneys, so the professional duties of confidentiality and conflict checking apply to us as they would to any firm, and we run a conflict check before any engagement starts. Because we work in a narrow field we take this seriously: we tell you at the outset if we act for anyone near your space, and we agree the conflict position with you in writing before we begin.
Yes, on the review and analysis work, which is part of why we can do more in the same number of days. The tools are our own, built by our attorneys on frontier models from Anthropic and Google under enterprise terms. Nothing is used to train a model, nothing is retained, and a qualified patent attorney checks every output before it reaches you. Our professional obligations apply to AI work exactly as they do to the rest. There is more on how we think about this in our article on AI and confidentiality.
We help you recruit, hand over the strategy, the portfolio and the systems, and then step back or stay on as a second senior view, whichever you prefer. Several of the things we set up during the fractional period, the invention disclosure process, the docketing, the strategy log, are there so that the handover is clean.
Yes. Our fractional clients include a US-listed company, and most pharma IP is global by nature. We are UK and European patent attorneys based in Cambridge, we work with US counsel on US prosecution, and we are used to the time zones.