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Michelle M. Ovanesian

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Michelle Ovanesian is an associate in the Litigation Department, where she focuses on intellectual property and life sciences. Michelle has worked on a range of matters in federal district courts, including serving on the successful trial team in the Amgen Inc. v. Sanofi remand jury trial in the District of Delaware.

In addition to intellectual property and life sciences, Michelle's practice has encompassed a variety of other legal matters, including privacy and cybersecurity, and bankruptcy litigation. Most recently, Michelle was part of the litigation team that represented the Financial Oversight and Management Board in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy proceedings.

Michelle maintains an active pro bono practice, with a focus on immigration law and civil rights. As part of her pro bono work, Michelle has filed an amicus brief in state court supporting the constitutionality of executive orders.

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Life Sciences is an area ripe for trade secrets misappropriation litigation. In recent news, Merz Pharmaceuticals, LLC filed a lawsuit under the North Carolina Uniform Trade Secrets Act alleging that its former director of federal accounts, Andrew Thomas, stole trade secrets relating to Merz’s flagship botulinum toxin drug Xeomin®. Those secrets purportedly included drug pricing strategies, marketing plans, market share data, and potential customer lists, all of which were intended to grow Xeomin®’s presence in the government market sector — a key therapeutic sector for Merz’s drug, which is primarily known for its aesthetic effects.   

In the United States, the scale of trade secret theft is estimated to be between $180 billion and $450 billion annually. Among the targets of this theft are pharmaceutical companies, which are some of the most research-intensive institutions in the world. Pharmaceutical research generally requires extensive work and often generates proprietary data that is pivotal to shaping pharmaceutical development. Because that data may be very attractive to threat actors, pharmaceutical companies employ various measures to protect their proprietary information, these measures may sometimes fall short. A November 2021 trade secret misappropriation suit brought by Venn Therapeutics (“Venn”) against Corbus Pharmaceuticals (“Corbus”) in the District Court for the Middle District of Florida highlights the issues that can arise despite a company’s best efforts to protect its trade secrets.

On July 9, 2021, President Biden issued “Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy” (the “Executive Order”). The Executive Order was billed by the White House as “historic” and comparable to Teddy Roosevelt’s trust-busting and Franklin Roosevelt’s “supercharged antitrust enforcement”. Asserting that a “fair, open, and competitive marketplace has long been the cornerstone of the American economy,” the Executive Order sets forth 72 initiatives across over a dozen federal agencies.

The Ensuring Innovation Act recently became law after passing in the Senate with unanimous, bipartisan support. According to one Senator, the intent of the legislation was to “close loopholes to prevent awarding market exclusivity to products that do not present true innovation and unduly delay cheaper generic from entering the market.” Is this much ado about nothing, or much to be concerned about?