Pharma Boardroom Interview

Sergio Olivares, managing director at Olivares, explains the TPP's impact on the Mexican pharmaceutical industry's dynamism and Olivares' business proposal as a one-stop shop solution to fulfill all its current and future clients' intellectual property needs.

Olivares began as an intellectual property (IP) boutique in 1969 and is today the most frequently awarded IP practice in Mexico. Could you please give to our international audience an update about the operations of the firm since we met you two years ago?

My father founded Olivares in 1969 with two attorneys and two technical experts. The firm has been steadily growing since its inception and now it is composed by nine partners.

We have been developing and adapting our offering according to our clients' needs. In this sense, 15 years ago, we realized that an increasing number of customers from the pharmaceutical industry were approaching us to help them enforce their patents. More recently, we have expanded our offering into the corporate area taking advantage of the existing synergies with IP. As an example of these new services Olivares is currently working on a couple of initiatives to help its clients to monetize IP rights, particularly patents; Mexico has a lot of potential in this approach because a lot of national technology is not protected by patents due to the poor knowledge surrounding the need for IP rights.

We are diversifying and enlarging our operations to fulfill the needs of our clients and to keep up the pace with the latest industry trends in our business. Such success in our diversification strategy has been based on the existing synergies in terms of knowledge and procedures of our different divisions. As a consequence, Olivares is perceived as a disruptive firm that is fully capable of offering an integral and one-stop shop solution to its clients.

What have been the main accomplishments of Olivares during the last few years?

Since 2008, because of the global crisis, the world has drastically changed from an economic, social and political standpoint. As a consequence, IP practices have also had to adapt to such dynamism and Olivares has been highly creative in finding new ways to run its operations, being lawyers but also business people.

Some services provided by IP law firms have started to be considered, to a certain extent, as a commodity, especially in areas such as trademark filing, which is a relatively straightforward process. Therefore, we have found ways to add value by being innovative and proactive in our operations as we are changing the services and the way they are delivered. It is a reality that, if you are not able to keep pace with the industry trends, you are in danger of disappearing. So, our biggest accomplishment has been to ensure that our business model changes to remain in line with the latest industry trends and clients' demands.

Olivares quickly became the first law firm in Mexico to start a life science practice with specialized human resources dedicated full-time to fulfilling the needs of clients in...