Legal news and trends for Canadian in-house counsel and c-suite executives
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topic at the moment is patent and generic law reform, he says. "One of the concerns that I have is the law is changing, or the society's opinion's shifting, which has a huge impact that rever- berates throughout the system, even down here," he says. A drug or biotech company's value is based upon its potential for revenue when it starts to commercialize multiplied by the number of years it has exclusivity, says Sherburne. If you change any of those variables by allowing generics to enter in faster or through the Patented Medicine Price Review Board (PMPRB), they affect the ability of any company in the sector to receive financing, he says. "That's the issue that I find . . . keeping me up at night. I find myself becoming involved. I'm involved with the PMPRB here in Canada, keeping up to the developments, participating to whatever extent I can in the various meetings or feedback ses- sions that they have," he says. In Vancouver, Stanger is Angiotech's only in-house counsel, although the company does have other corporate counsel work- ing on IP and commercial law outside of Seattle. Because his company has recently gone from being a research and development firm to having products and a sales force, and because it has also acquired a company that had a lot of those products, Stanger is doing a lot of contract work in terms of getting the sales infrastructure in place, which involves the distribu- tors and independent representa- tives that sell the products all over the world. "I think there's going to be a lot of that going forward. The na- ture of what our company is has changed quite a bit," he says. A typical day in his position can involve anything from a looking at a commercial lease to securities issues, licensing agreements, and employment issues, he says. One challenge, says Stanger, is Another issue, he says, is that when he first arrived in Vancou- ver four-and-a-half years ago to work at Angiotech, there was a "healthy burgeoning" biotech industry in the city, which has been set back over the last few years. This is a worry, he says, as it is hard to recruit people, as you have to move them to the area, and there isn't a workforce there that can move from company to company. While the city did achieve a lot of success in biotech for be- ing a smaller centre, Stanger says that for it to continue and be- come a self-sustaining industry, there has to be more of a critical mass. Working closely with teams in different sectors as well as be- ing involved in the business are some of the bonuses of work- ing in biotech, say in-house lawyers, as is the knowledge that the company is working towards making a difference for many individuals. The environment is ever-changing and moves quickly, says Dunlop, in terms of regulatory developments, and the huge variety of work is interesting and provides a constant learning mode as well as a challenge, she adds. Recently, Bioniche an- nounced that it had entered into three financing transactions to support the expansion of its manufacturing capability in Bel- leville for one of its vaccines. For Dunlop, this involved "You can't be all things to all people in all countries. It's almost impossible. So the key thing is just to have a good support network across the world to be able to rely upon for some of these things." that the company is so spread out, geographically. "Even though I'm a Canadian lawyer and qualified here, probably most of my work is U.S. and . . . we're setting up a lot of sales structure all over the world, so international as well, so the difficulty of working across distances and the difficulty of working in jurisdictions where, as you can imagine, just the dif- ferent laws in the different jurisdictions and we can't always have local counsel review everything," he says. In terms of keeping on top of the U.S. law, Stanger says the company uses a couple of big U.S. law firms with offices in a number of jurisdictions for information and education. He adds that he expects the U.S. component of his work to increase and the Canadian component to decrease, as the firm's presence is growing in the U.S. and the majority of the com- pany's shareholders are in that country. DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND LEGAL AFFAIRS, BIOMS MEDICAL — CRAIG SHERBURNE, three loan transactions that had to be closed within a short period of time, she says. Working in a small company and being intimately involved in the business decisions and on a close level with the scientists is rewarding, says Dunlop. "Also, just working for a com- pany where you believe that the technologies will someday make a meaningful difference to peo- ple's health, that's very satisfy- ing," she says. Stanger shares a similar sen- timent that, as the company is smaller, decisions are being made by people you deal with on a day-to-day basis, and as in-house counsel you get to be a trusted adviser and part of the decision-making process. Working with professionals from so many different disci- plines is also a plus. One of the rewards of the job, says Sherburne, is that you are not just making a difference for the company, but "you're go- ing to work everyday with the possibility of, in BioMS's case, of playing some not insignificant role in helping hundreds of thousands of people all across the world," he says. "It puts a little spring in your step to know that you actually are making a difference and you're all working together to make a difference to an awful lot of people who certainly need it," he adds. IH C ANADIAN Lawyer INHOUSE JUNE 2008 37