Alexa Hansen

A patent holder herself, Alexa R. Hansen is also a patent litigation partner at Covington & Burling LLP with a focus on pharmaceutical and biological clients. She joined the firm in 2009.

In addition to her litigation work, she also provides patent analysis for product acquisitions and financial transactions.

Her experience as a medicinal chemist designing small-molecule drugs for Merck & Co. prior to law school aids her insight into her clients’ matters, she said.

Hansen is named as an inventor on three patents. “Any drug compound case for me is a chance to revisit my background,” she said.

That was true of the major win she obtained leading a Covington team representing Amgen Inc. and its $2 billion psoriasis drug Otezla. Hansen served as lead counsel throughout the matter, initially for Celgene Corp. and continuing on behalf of Amgen after it acquired Otezla in November 2019.

Amgen sued 19 generic pharmaceutical companies that applied to market Otezla copies; after most settled, Hansen and the team prevailed at a trial that resulted in a 91-page opinion finding that the defendants infringed Amgen’s patents. Amgen Inc. v. Sandoz Inc. et al., 3:18-cv-11026 (D. N.J., filed June 26, 2018).

In April, Hansen and colleagues won affirmance at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Amgen Inc., v. Sandoz Inc. et al., 22-1147 (Fed. Cir., op. filed April 19, 2023).

“The win is an exciting development,” Hansen said. “Otezla is a huge drug that deserves protection. It was a brand-new compound discovered by scientists at Celgene in the early 2000s when it was a small startup. It was based on the idea that there may be a way to design an analog to thalidomide to get rid of the side effects.”

Due to her own work as a chemist, she added, “I appreciate the difficult chemistry involved. No one really knows what caused the birth defects associated with thalidomide, so I find it fascinating that the Celgene chemists successfully explored the effects of modification of this drug.”

Hansen represents Brussels, Belgium-based biopharmaceutical company UCB S.A. in several matters. Post-trial briefing is complete and a ruling is pending in one case involving patent litigation against five generic drug companies seeking approval to make generic versions of UCB’s epilepsy treatment drug Briviact. UCB Inc. v. Annora Pharma Private Ltd. et al., 1:20-cv-00987 (D. Del., filed July 24, 2020).

The defense argued obviousness due to another UCB drug that shared some structural similarities. But Hansen had an answer: “Small changes can make a big difference,” she said.

—John Roemer