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Portrait of Mary-Clare Palmer

Profile

Mary-Clare is an associate in the IP, IT and commercial team in Oxford. She specialises in advising on IP and commercial agreements within the life sciences, renewable energy, marine technology and agri-tech sectors. She often works with spin-outs and early stage companies, supporting through all stages of their growth, from initial IP licensing and research or collaboration terms, through to pre-clinical and clinical trial stages (in life sciences) and high-value global licensing, manufacture and distribution agreements. Mary-Clare also has significant experience assisting medical research charities and not-for-profit research entities.

She has worked on secondment as in-house legal counsel at the British Elite Athletes’ Association, advising Team GB athletes during the Tokyo Olympics, and at Evox Therapeutics, advising on and negotiating all of its day-to-day contracts, including confidentiality, services agreements and pharma licences.  She currently works semi-in-house for a group of fast-growth biotech companies in Milton Park, advising on a full range of IP and contractual legal issues.

Mary-Clare joined the firm in 2019. She converted to law with a first-class degree in Classics and Modern Languages (French) from Trinity College, Oxford. Alongside work, she is currently studying for the Oxford Postgraduate Diploma in Intellectual Property Law and Practice.

Recent work highlights

  • Negotiating a multi-million-pound international collaboration between two major governmental marine research bodies.
  • Advising a digital therapy platform on medical device regulation, online patient access terms and data protection compliance pre-launch.
  • Negotiating clinical trial grant funding terms for two prestigious UK medical research charities.
  • Advising multiple spin-outs from Oxford and Imperial Universities on patent, know-how and software licensing terms and research collaboration agreements.
  • Advising the commercialisation arm of a major agri-tech not-for-profit research institute on its licensing terms and commercial templates.
  • Developing and negotiating the clinical manufacture, laboratory analysis and clinical trial site templates for a biotech entering phase I/II clinical trials.

Penningtons Manches Cooper LLP

Penningtons Manches Cooper LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales with registered number OC311575 and is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority under number 419867.

Penningtons Manches Cooper LLP