From battery chemistry to vaccine platforms

Her first day as a patent trainee was 7 September 1998. Almost thirty years later, to the day, she starts at Greenwoods. 

Sarah is a Chartered UK and European Patent Attorney and a biochemist – still, in her own head, mostly the second one. She read Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry at Oxford, trained at a London patent firm, then spent five years at NHS Innovations London working in technology transfer – taking inventions from clinicians and scientists and working out what it would take to turn them into a business. Finding the patentable idea, protecting it, getting proof-of-concept funding in place, standing up spin-out companies. She has spent almost 30 years in IP work since, most of it in life sciences: nucleic acid technologies, biological therapeutics and vaccines, diagnostics and biological assays. 

She joins from Stratagem IPM in Cambridge, where she has worked since 2011 and has been CEO since 2022. 

Rob Dillarstone, CEO, said: “Jim built this practice and has led it with enthusiasm and care for many years. He isn’t going anywhere – he’ll continue as a partner, doing the work he’s brilliant at. Sarah has run an IP firm. She knows the commercial side as well as the technical one, and she’ll build on everything Jim and the team have achieved. It’s great to have her join us.” 

The practice grows a specialism 

Sarah takes over a practice area with real technical range in it already. Jim, Martin Hammler and Arthur Boff handle patent preparation, prosecution and opposition across ceramics, polymers, nanomaterials, energy storage, medical devices and chemical engineering – work that runs through the European Patent Office and depends on knowing how that institution actually thinks. Abigail Woolhouse and James McAllister cover trade marks and brands. Copyright, design rights, trade secrets and know-how sit alongside all of it, and it is often the trade secrets and know-how that hold a client’s whole IP position together. 

What Sarah brings is a specialism the practice has not had, and a Cambridge, London and Oxford profile to go with it. She has spent 15 years advising life sciences companies from all three – university spin-outs, therapeutics businesses, diagnostics companies on the science parks – and latterly more from London and Oxford than from Cambridge. She knows that market and the people in it. Her own technical background is in nucleic acid technologies, biological therapeutics and vaccines, diagnostics and biological assays. Add that to what the team already does and the practice now covers a technical range running from battery chemistry to vaccine platforms. We work across our offices as one firm, so all of it is available to every client, wherever they or we happen to sit. 

Jim Boff, Partner, said: “We went looking for someone who could lead the team and add something we did not have. Finding both in one person is rare. Sarah has run an IP business, she is a serious biochemist, and she is embedded in the life sciences community. I am looking forward to handing over the leadership of the team to Sarah and to continuing to enjoy advising clients.” 

Sarah is the second arrival from Stratagem IPM this year. Abigail Woolhouse joined in June as Head of Trade Marks. 

Sarah Grant said: “I have spent 15 years advising life sciences companies that IP decisions made in the first year – sometimes before there is even a company – determine what is possible in year five. At Greenwoods the IP advice sits alongside the funding round, the commercial contracts, the employment advice and, if it comes to it, the litigation. For a company at that stage, having all of that in one place is worth a great deal. Abi arriving in June was part of the draw. So was the fact that Jim had built such a fantastic team to lead into its next phases of growth.” 

To talk to us about intellectual property, contact Sarah Grant or Jim Boff.