PopVax

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Manager – IP

  • Legal
  • Full-time
  • Hyderabad, IN

Posted on July 10, 2024

PopVax is an Indian biotechnology company based in Hyderabad which is building a next-generation mRNA platform for broadly-protective vaccines via computationally-driven antigen design and a novel delivery platform.

PopVax was founded by Soham Sankaran, and our research work has been funded primarily via research agreements with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (India) & Vitalik Buterin's Balvi. The team includes a former founding employee of Moderna and some of India's top experts in mRNA, lipid nanoparticle (LNP) formulation, and protein engineering. Our small but growing IP team is led by our VP - IP and Legal who previously spent more than a decade at Shantha Biotech / Sanofi India. 

Despite the rapid growth of the Indian pharmaceutical industry, there are very few companies in this country working on truly novel research that they seek to translate into the clinic in the form of a first-in-the-world or best-in-the-world medicine, contenting themselves instead with biosimilars and generics that they clone twenty years after the originals are first made available in the West. As a result, the people of India either suffer a decades-long delay in obtaining leading edge treatment, or find themselves paying unsustainable sums of money to foreign companies who have developed and own the intellectual property that underlies the cure they seek. It is this intellectual property that allows one single American biopharmaceutical company, Pfizer, to individually dwarf the combined total revenue of the entire set of listed Indian drugmakers. 

PopVax is not a conventional Indian pharma company. We operate at the frontier of protein design and nucleic acid therapeutics in our quest to develop completely novel biomedicines that will not only save millions of lives in India and abroad, but bring in billions of dollars of revenue on the back of Indian-invented intellectual property, and in doing so fund a revolution in translational biology research in this country.

We seek creative, detailed-oriented, scientifically-grounded patent attorneys to take our research from the lab and onto the page. In the last 1 year we have filed 20 provisional patent applications with an IP team of just 3 people. This is a unique opportunity to join this talented, hardworking, and extremely productive team in drafting patents built on cutting-edge novel technology from scratch, defining our IP strategy, and managing our growing patent portfolio. The work will be intellectually challenging, and the hours may sometimes be long, but there will not be a moment of boredom.     

We are seeking a Manager - IP to join our Legal and IP team in Hyderabad. Responsibilities will include: 

  • Drafting, filing, and prosecuting patent applications across multiple jurisdictions, including India, the US, and Europe

  • Providing assessments and opinions on patent validity/invalidity, patentability, and freedom-to-operate 

  • Identifying FTO issues proactively and developing risk mitigation strategies

  • Managing outside counsel work related to patent prosecution and contested proceedings

  • Conducting patentability, freedom-to-operate, validity/invalidity, & state-of-the art searches, including bio-sequence searches, and preparing search reports

  • Performing infringement analysis and preparing claim charts and maps

  • Interacting with multidisciplinary teams involving R&D, Manufacturing, Clinical, and Regulatory, and advising on IP issues

The ideal candidate will possess the following qualifications and skills:

  • A Master’s degree in biotechnology or a similar field is required

  • A patent agent qualification and/or law degree are preferred but not mandatory

  • 5-8 years of core experience in drafting and prosecution in biotechnology or life sciences domain

  • Experience handling contested proceedings is preferred, but not mandatory

  • A good understanding of US and European patent laws

  • The ability to work well in a team as well as independently pursue tasks and projects when necessary, without close supervision

  • Complete fluency in English, with excellent oral and written communication skills, and an eye for detail

  • The ability to work in a highly-demanding and dynamic environment under challenging timelines

We offer very competitive compensation, comprehensive health insurance covering immediate family (including pre-existing conditions), and, most importantly, a collaborative work environment focused on solving the cutting-edge multidisciplinary challenges of our novel mRNA platform.