Lucy Williams

Lucy is a European and UK Patent Attorney. She studied for her PhD as part of the prestigious Wellcome Trust PhD programme in Developmental and Stem Cell biology at the University of Cambridge. After an initial year studying the dynamics of cell proliferation, the origins of embryonic pluripotency and the molecular mechanisms of cell polarity, her PhD was focused on a functional analysis of motor protein dynamics during oogenesis, using Drosophila melanogaster as a model system. An additional project concerned investigating the non-Newtonian fluid dynamics of the oocyte cytoplasm. During her PhD, Lucy published first-author papers in the well-known academic journals PNAS and Development.

Lucy has a passion for helping clients solve puzzles associated with their intellectual property, be that how best to draft a broad but patentable claim, or how to overcome objections in view of the prior art. Her natural sciences degree and PhD both revolved around assimilating information from a broad range of subjects; from chemistry, biochemistry, neuroscience, molecular biology, and genetics. She relishes a career that keeps that breadth and exposes her to a wide range of biotechnology inventions.

Much of Lucy’s work involves providing advice to tech transfer offices, spin outs and SMEs.  As such, she has in depth experience of providing strategic advice at all stages of commercialisation, from identifying inventions, patentability assessments, freedom to operate analyses, patent drafting and prosecution, and portfolio building. Always intrigued by next generation therapies, Lucy has built up particular experience in the fields of antibody therapeutics and cell and gene therapies, and has drafted and controlled prosecution of wide ranging national series in relation to ocular gene therapies. She has also extensively advised on freedom to operate in relation to cutting-edge cell therapeutics.

In keeping with her biochemistry training, Lucy is also adept at providing advice in relation to inventions the fields of structural biology and nucleotide synthesis. Her experience includes successfully defending patents in these fields at Opposition proceedings at the EPO.

Lucy joined J A Kemp in 2012 and became a partner in 2023.