Most lawyers’ first thought when selecting expert witnesses is to contact an appropriate university professor who has expertise in a related scientific discipline. It often helps if the academic is a consultant to industry, where they may have picked up enough expertise to be able to focus their academic knowledge towards the industrial application that has resulted in the patent dispute. But is a specialist in a narrow academic subject what is needed, or would an expert with a wider industrial knowledge be better?

Other legal teams take the view that, for certain types of patent dispute, particularly process patents, it helps to have an expert witness who is much more familiar with industrial processes, and the procedures and protocols involved. An understanding of how the process was originally developed, optimised, scaled up, etc. may also be a useful attribute in an expert witness. Industrial process chemists are usually either still working for their companies (and therefore not regarded as independent, nor are they readily available) or have long since retired, in which case their expertise may not have been kept up-to-date. We, at Scientific Update LLP, along with a small number of other independent consultants, are unusual in having wide expertise in process chemistry/engineering (which we are continually updating) along with complete independence and, usually, ready availability. This may explain why our consultants are often in demand for legal work as expert witnesses.

One other reason may be the level of commitment that is given when an opinion is sought. Our experts are totally focused on the case and are not distracted by the demands of academic research. Our wide knowledge of industrial processes is backed up by a collection of case studies, many of which have been presented at conferences that we have initiated and organised on the subject of organic process R&D, scale-up and manufacture, the focus of many patent disputes.