Mr. Stevens is a partner in the Intellectual Property/Information Technology practice group. His practice focuses on patent litigation and other complex commercial matters, building on his substantial formative experience as a lead criminal prosecutor, government enforcement attorney and Director of the Delaware Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division. For the past 13 years, as a private-practice litigator, trial counsel and senior in-house counsel for two major pharmaceutical companies, Mr. Stevens has focused on Hatch-Waxman patent litigation in the United States and similar pharmaceutical patent litigations in Canada, Australia, and other global pharmaceutical markets.
Mr. Stevens offers his clients a unique blend of practical litigation expertise, industry experience, client-perspective and strategic understanding in the complex and ever-changing world of global patent litigation—particularly cases arising out of Abbreviated New Drug Application filings with the FDA and similar matters in Canada and other global markets.
Prior to joining McCarter & English, Mr. Stevens served as Assistant General Counsel for Global IP Litigation at AstraZeneca. In that role, Mr. Stevens, and the senior counsel reporting to him, were responsible for the strategic management and control of all patent infringement cases in North America and selected global markets. Mr. Stevens enjoyed significant success enforcing patents for Seroquel®, Crestor®, Nexium® and Seroquel XR®. As a member of senior global legal management, Mr. Stevens counseled senior management teams on numerous significant patent, antitrust and regulatory matters.
Before joining AstraZeneca, Mr. Stevens managed patent and intellectual property litigations at GlaxoSmithKline, including significant cases in United States District Courts, the Canadian Federal Court, the International Trade Commission and state courts, involving patent, trade secret, and antitrust issues for Paxil®, Paxil CR®, Advair®, Augmentin® and other products.
In private practice, Mr. Stevens represented pharmaceutical and chemical companies in several patent, trade secret and antitrust litigations at the law firm of Connolly, Bove, Lodge and Hutz LLP.
Before entering private practice, Mr. Stevens served as Director of the Delaware Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division and directed that office’s Litigation & Enforcement Unit in the Fraud and Consumer Protection Division. In those roles, Mr. Stevens prosecuted cases and managed deputies attorney general responsible for the investigation and prosecution of enforcement actions involving consumer fraud, deceptive trade and antitrust. As a lead trial-prosecutor, Mr. Stevens presented numerous cases to juries involving complex white-collar crimes, fraud and other serious felonies. Working with legislators, he developed new or amended Delaware commercial fraud statutes involving consumer fraud, telemarketing, deceptive trade practices and construction-fraud.
Mr. Stevens has been recognized for excellence in his legal career; most notably, in 2011, he received the AstraZeneca CEO’s Award for excellence as the result of his leadership and accomplishments in the patent defense of Crestor®. Delaware’s Attorney General, M. Jane Brady named him the Deputy Attorney General of the Year in 1997 for his several successful major prosecutions and accomplishments.