Life Sciences

• Steptoe & Johnson’s Life Sciences Team can help bring a client’s product from idea to market, then assist with ongoing business and regulatory matters, and occasional unexpected issues.
• Our Life Sciences practice spans a multitude of industries including food, dietary supplements, sports nutrition, medical devices, nutraceuticals, and natural products, including hemp products, cannabidiol (CBD), and other hempderived cannabinoids.
• Our team routinely assists U.S. and foreign clients with navigating the legal, regulatory, business, and litigation matters that arise throughout a product’s entire life cycle — from development, formulation, manufacturing, and production, through claims review, labeling, packaging, omni-channel marketing, product distribution, and sale.
• We know your products operate in highly competitive markets, and we understand how regulations by federal and state agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), can impact your business.
• We understand the need for prompt, practical, business-focused legal advice, and action which facilitates entity formation and acquisitions; negotiating and documenting commercial transactions; ensuring import and export compliance; protecting, licensing, and exploiting intellectual property; structuring logistics optimization; regulatory compliance; risk mitigation; pursuing claims and defending the business; ensuring supply chain security; labeling; marketing; and product promotion.

Ongoing Business Operations and Opportunities 

• Our Commercial Transactions Team provides quick access to client-focused, business-seasoned counsel who possess a broad range of strategic experience and specific core competencies to respond, answer, and address your unique commercial and contracting needs.  
• Working together we can help streamline your regular commercial transactions and negotiation process, or even provide extra resources needed when company staffing would be stretched too thin by peak activity. Our team can support emerging and established companies in nearly any industry as they seek to improve, expand, reduce risk, or restructure their current operations. We can assist with documenting and negotiating the more complex transactions, such as synergistic distribution and supply-chain networks that improve your business systems and productivity. Moreover, we can structure various arrangements, such as royalty and licensing agreements that will protect your intellectual property and strategic assets.
• Our IP practice focuses on providing clients with the highest quality work in the areas of trademark, copyright, and advertising issues. Our firm’s IP lawyers consistently stay up to date on regulatory advertising requirements and substantive trademark developments to not only assist clients in navigating the trademark and copyright registration processes, but to help them enforce rights in their registered IP assets while decreasing the likelihood of unexpected litigation.
• Working collaboratively to meet your business and legal needs, we offer regular consultations to tune up the legal side of your business, coordinate your commercial contracts, identify risk areas and opportunities for your business, and help reduce risk exposure. We know that you need contracts that are easily understood and facilitate getting business done. We work with you to craft commercial transactions and contracts that won’t frustrate your business partners and customers but will still protect your rights.