Emily Hayes

Emily is an extremely accomplished European and UK patent attorney, with 20 years of experience in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors. With a background in Biochemistry, Emily has developed an exceptional track record in drafting and prosecuting patent applications across a broad range of life science technologies, particularly in the fields of antibody therapeutics, oncology, inflammatory diseases, transgenic mouse technology, diagnostic methods, and personalised medicine.

Emily is highly skilled in managing large global patent portfolios, offering strategic counsel to clients in line with their commercial interests. Her extensive experience spans both the European Patent Office (EPO) and patent offices worldwide, allowing her to navigate complex international patent landscapes. She is particularly experienced at providing strategic guidance to clients seeking to protect their clinical assets, including approved drugs, globally.

A sizeable proportion of Emily’s work involves handling EPO opposition and appeal proceedings, both defensive and offensive. She has successfully represented clients in multiple high-stakes hearings before the EPO and her opposition highlights to date are listed below. She is extremely results-driven, with a very clear focus on getting the right commercial outcome for her clients and relishes the strategic aspect of opposition and appeal proceedings.

Emily's client base includes leading multinational pharmaceutical corporations, as well as SMEs, start-ups, spin-out companies, research charities, and universities in both the UK and Europe. She handles global patent portfolios for these clients ensuring that they have robust global protection for their inventions and commercial assets. She also works very closely with US attorney firms, as well as directly with US-based biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, to protect their commercial assets in Europe, and is able to offer deep insights into the European patent system.

Emily regularly shares her insights through seminars on European patent law, including presentations to US patent attorneys at AIPLA, BIPLA and LSPN conferences. With her deep technical knowledge, practical experience, and strong international focus, Emily is uniquely positioned to provide cutting-edge patent services and strategic advice in the fast-evolving biotechnology space.

Learn more about Emily in this “meet the team” interview.

International experience

Emily spent three months on secondment to a prominent US patent attorney firm in Boston in 2010, further expanding her expertise in US patent law and the life sciences sector. Since then, she has been a regular visitor to Boston to meet with clients and contacts in the Massachusetts life sciences community.

Academic experience

Emily’s academic credentials include a first class M.Sci degree in Natural Sciences (specialising in Biochemistry) from the University of Cambridge. She also has a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge, where her doctoral research focussed on developing an anti-angiogenic gene therapy for the treatment of cancer.

Professional qualifications

After joining Mewburn Ellis LLP in 2005, Emily qualified as a Chartered Patent Attorney and European Patent Attorney in 2009. She was awarded the Michael Jones Prize for the candidate achieving the highest mark in the Amendment paper in her UK final examinations. She joined the partnership in 2013. She is also qualified to represent clients before the Unified Patent Court.  

Additional roles

Within Mewburn, Emily is a member of the Partner Leadership Group and is closely involved with the partner professional development review process, ensuring that it is aligned with the firm’s commercial values, initiatives and interests.

Opposition highlights

Emily has extensive experience representing clients at opposition and appeal hearings at the EPO and has been the lead attorney on numerous oppositions, both defensive and offensive, many of which have been multi-opponent proceedings. 

Offensive opposition highlights:

• Revocation of Pfizer’s anti-NGF patents EP 1,575,522, EP 1,732,949 and EP 1,556,083 before the EPO Board of Appeal (T 441/12, T 858/13 and T 2145/13 respectively).
• Revocation of Amgen’s patent EP 2,559,705 relating to anti-activin A antibodies before the EPO Board of Appeal (T 813/19).
• Revocation of Orega BioTech and INSERM’s patent EP 2,654,789 relating to anti-CD39 antibodies before the EPO’s Opposition Division.
• Revocation of EP 3,636,778 relating to antisense nucleic acid molecules for treating facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy.
• Revocation of Altor BioScience’s patent EP 1,409,646 relating to transgenic animals comprising a humanized immune system before the EPO’s Opposition Division.
• Revocation of BioMarin’s patent EP 2,806,900 relating to antisense oligonucleotides for treating Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophy before the EPO’s Opposition Division.

Defensive opposition highlights:

• Successfully defended EP 1,942,939 relating to the commercial formulation for Adtralza® (Tralokinumab) before the EPO’s Opposition Division.
• Successfully defended EP 2,997,036 relating to a platform technology for purifying recombinantly produced polypeptides before the EPO’s Opposition Division following opposition by two opponents, with the patent being maintained as granted.
• Successfully defended a series of patents relating to amorphadiene production (EP 2,021,486, EP 2,217,711 and EP 2,024,504) for Amyris, Inc. before the EPO Board of Appeal (T 1587/17, T 969/18 and T1424/18), as well as EP 2,066,778 before the EPO’s Opposition Division.  

Emily has prepared this short video sharing five prosecution tips to help prepare your patent for success in opposition proceedings. She also appears in the firm’s films explaining our approach to oppositions and other contentious proceedings.

What people say

“The proceeding went extremely well thanks to your thorough preparation, and I compliment you for being clear and concise in your presentations to the OD - great job!  Attending the opposition and watching you in action gave me great confidence that we have chosen the right counsel for this and other EU patent matters.”

[US biotech client]

“You did a great job!  Your ability to think quickly and adjust to unpredictable situations is truly impressive.  That skill was definitely key to our success yesterday.”

[Multinational biotech client]