Our challenge is everyone’s challenge: how to ensure that the world becomes a better place to live by supporting advances in healthcare.

Research and development in medicines, biological products, vaccines and health technologies should be available to everyone. Our role is to work in partnership with our members, governments, intergovernmental bodies, non-governmental organizations, civil society organizations and others to share our experience and expertise on how to achieve a vibrant innovation ecosystem.

Delivering a unique focus

Interpat was originally set up in the 1960s, focused on senior IP professionals offering advice on intellectual property to the management of member companies. Since then, we’ve become a biopharmaceutical industry organisation in our own right.

We are unique amongst biopharmaceutical industry associations in that our Representatives are senior IP or patent counsel. These Representatives have extensive experience as both practising attorneys and senior managers, so we’re continually delivering expert, informed opinion and advice

Driving Innovation

“Our objective is to promote effective intellectual Property (IP) protection throughout the world as a key incentive for sustainable innovation to advance global health.”

Our Objectives

We follow these guiding principles:

Supporting life-changing work

Supporting life-changing work The biopharmaceutical industry has delivered life-changing interventions for safeguarding and improving health. This needs to continue, so we can meet the needs of a global population with increasingly complex health needs. To do this, we must focus on collaborative innovation and delivery across all the industries associated with global health provision.

Innovation must be stimulated and nurtured – and that’s the job of policymakers in this field. Providing the best environment and incentives for technology, science and communication research will deliver long-term benefit to patients now and in the future – wherever they are.

A birds-eye view

We share knowledge, expertise, good practice and industry experience to promote biopharmaceutical innovation. We also monitor and review IP legislation and enforcement and have established working groups that focus on relevant topics across Latin America, China, India and Greater Asia, as well as the Convention on Biological Diversity. This work, combined with our varied membership, means we have a birds-eye view across the industry, and the ability to usefully advise and help all those involved.

Idea incubator

Interpat acts as an incubator for new ideas to help foster innovation activity or enhance understanding of the value and role of IP. Examples of these ideas include:

Collaboration

Interpat works in partnership with other industry associations at global, regional and local levels to ensure that policy development and advocacy deployment benefits from the full range of industry expertise and latest available information. Interpat also has a number of partnerships with academia and platforms for the mutually beneficial exchange of perspectives, expertise and experience.

How we work

The Interpat General Assembly comprises our entire membership, and the President and Vice President are elected from the Principal Representatives of Member Companies.

These officers serve for two years and can be re-elected for an additional two-year term. The President and Vice President sit on the Interpat Executive Committee, which also includes the ex-officio Director General and Treasurer. Other members of the Executive Committee represent different geographical locations.

Dorian Immler

Bayer, Head of Patents Pharma & Consumer Health

Dorian is Head of Patents Pharma & Consumer Health for the Bayer group. In this position he is globally responsible for all patent matters of the Pharma and Consumer Health divisions of Bayer. His main office is in Monheim, further sites of the patent group are in Berlin, Whippany, Pittsburgh and Berkeley.

Dorian received his PhD in biochemistry from the University of Bochum in 1999 and joined Bayer to work in the Central Research facility in Leverkusen, mostly on topics around proteomics. He then moved on to pharmaceutical research in Wuppertal, before making the move to the IP world. At that time he joined the crop protection business of Bayer, where he also received his qualification as a European Patent. He was responsible for the global Environmental Science business (covering uses of pesticides outside agrochemistry). He then headed the pesticide patent group within crop protection before taking over his current role in 2010.

Henry Hadad

BMS, Senior Vice President & Deputy General Counsel

Henry Hadad is Senior Vice President & Deputy General Counsel, Innovation Law, at Bristol Myers Squibb in Princeton, NJ, where he is Chief Intellectual Property (IP) Counsel, leading a team supporting the company’s efforts to discover, develop and deliver groundbreaking treatments for patients with serious unmet medical need.  He was previously Chief IP Counsel at Schering-Plough Corporation and held roles at Johnson & Johnson and in private practice.  During his legal career, Mr. Hadad has represented the innovative biopharmaceutical, generic, medical device and consumer goods industries, with a focus on IP procurement, litigation, transactions and policy in the United States and internationally, and is an active member of numerous IP educational, policy and advocacy organizations.  He is a board member of the Intellectual Property Owners (IPO) Association, served as its President (2018-2019), and is currently chair of its Amicus Committee.  In September 2022, Mr. Hadad received IPO’s Carl B. Horton Distinguished IP Service award for “extraordinary leadership and dedication to promoting the value of intellectual property to society and the global economy.”  In December 2022, he was appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce to the Patent Public Advisory Committee (PPAC), which is charged with reviewing “policies, goals, performance, budget, and user fees” of the USPTO and advising the Director on these matters.   Mr. Hadad holds a B.S. in Biology from Haverford College and a J.D., cum laude, from the American University, Washington College of Law.

 

Andrew Jenner

Interpat, Director General

 

Andrew Jenner is Director General of Interpat – a global trade association of Chief IP Counsels from the biopharmaceutical industry that seeks create sustainable innovation ecosystems to advance human health. He has a passion for collaboration and finding solutions that work in both the short and long term. He is also the Executive Director of a global strategy and policy consultancy based in the UK and assists a range of clients on corporate affairs strategies, particularly in advancing economies.

He was previous the Executive Director of Corporate Strategy and Legal Affairs at the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufactures and Associations (IFPMA) based in Geneva, where he deputised for the Director General. His main responsibilities included developing pharmaceutical industry strategy and policy development on priority issues. He also represented the industry within the UN and the World Trade Organization, leading a diverse team of policy, public affairs and legal professionals.

From 2007 to 2009 he was a Senior Policy Advisor and Head of the IP Crime Policy Group for the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO), and led on the creation and implementation of an interagency strategy to combat counterfeiting and piracy.

From 2004 to 2007 he was Head of Trade & Development at the IPO and led the UK delegation within the World Trade Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization. He was also the principle IP advisor to the EU on the World Health Organization’s negotiations on Public Health, Innovation and IP. He also led on policy relating to EU/UK IP pharmaceutical regulations, including the EU Regulation on the compulsory licensing, and implementation of the EU Human Medicines and Paediatric Medicines Regulations into UK law. He first joined the UK Government in 1998 as a patent examiner in medical and optical devices having previously worked in the automotive industry.

He is Chartered Manager (CMGR), a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management (FCMI), a Fellow the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) and a Member of the Institute of Engineering & Technology (MIET) having a bachelor’s degree (B.Eng (Hons)) in Mechanical Engineering, and a Post-graduate (PgD) and Master (LLM) degrees in Law.

Robert Stanley

Novartis, Global Head Intellectual Property

Robert Stanley is the Global Head of Intellectual Property for the Novartis Group, responsible for all IP matters throughout the business, as a member of Novartis’s Legal Leadership Team and head of the IP Leadership Team. He joined Novartis in 2017 as the Global Head IP Litigation. Prior to joining Novartis, Robert was a Partner at Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner in Atlanta, Georgia, where he focused on pharmaceutical patent litigation as well as prosecution and counseling for patents and trademarks. Robert has a B.S. in chemistry and a B.A. in political science from Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, and a J.D. cum laude from the University of Georgia.

North America Region

Eric Aaronson

Pfizer, Chief Intellectual Property Counsel and Chief Counsel for Corporate Affairs

Europe Central Region

Andreas Poredda

F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Chief Patent Officer

Europe West Region

John Conway

Sanofi, SVP, Global Head of Intellectual Property

Asia Pacific Region

James Kellerman

Astellas, SVP, Head of IP Transactions & Strategic Initiatives