When Innovation Meets The Courtroom, with Laura Whiting and Arty Rajendra
Send us Fan Mail Lee and Gwilym are joined on the podcast by Laura Whiting from Freshfields and Arty Rajendra from Osborne Clarke. Ever wonder who decides the price of your medicine, the terms behind your 5G connection, or why your favorite streaming platform keeps changing codecs? We sit down with two leading IP litigators to pull back the curtain on the high-stakes world where innovation meets the courtroom—life sciences, telecoms, and the streaming wars. First, we unpack how patents power the business model in pharma. With only a tiny share of compounds making it to patients, those limited years of exclusivity fund a decade of risk and research. We explore how innovators defend that window and how generic companies plan surgical challenges to enter earlier and drive prices down. It is a constant chess match, played out across multiple countries with hundreds of millions at stake in a single market. Then we turn to standard essential patents and FRAND licensing. After Unwired Planet, the UK became a pivotal venue for setting global license terms—one decision, worldwide effect. Now the battlefield is shifting to streaming and video codecs. Where do you license—decoder or platform? How do you price a license when usage, audiences, and devices vary wildly? The valuation debate is intense, merging economics, data, and legal precedent in new ways.