Arnold & Porter LLP represents a diverse client base whose products incorporate nanotechnology. This innovative science, which involves the engineering of materials on a molecular level for such products as drugs, devices, and chemicals, provides astonishing opportunities for technological advancement. The US National Science Foundation estimates that more than US$1 trillion in global products will incorporate nanotechnology by 2015, and the European Commission expects this market in Europe to grow by hundreds of billions of euros in this decade alone. Our clients in this area come to us from a variety of industries and organizations, including food, drugs, and medical devices; consumer products; defense, homeland security, and national security; energy; biotechnology; electronics; colleges, universities, public research laboratories, and public-private partnerships; chemicals; and cosmetics.
As clients navigate the research and commercial opportunities of nanotechnology, we help them handle the complex legal, regulatory, and public policy issues that are emerging in the US, Europe, and Asia. We are closely monitoring international developments and are participating in global panels, industry groups, and roundtables concerning nanotechnology. In the US, more than 25 federal agencies, as diverse as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Department of Defense (DOD), National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH), and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), all claim a role in oversight. Similarly, the European Commission, European Medicines Agency (EMEA), the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), and the Health and Safety Commission (HSE) are just a few of the European organizations considering regulatory responses.
Our nanotechnology group is composed of a cross-disciplinary team of attorneys from our product liability and mass tort, environmental, food and drug, public policy, national security, government contracts, antitrust, intellectual property, and corporate practices. Our experience in these interrelated areas positions us well to counsel clients on matters likely to emerge in the nanotechnology field. Of distinct note, more than 80 of our attorneys are actively engaged in product liability matters, acting both as national counsel and as trial counsel in cases asserting personal injury and property damage; a number of our lawyers currently hold key advisory positions in organizations that are coordinating nanotechnology and related information technology and the life sciences; more than 20 of our firm's lawyers draw on their previous experience as physicians, toxicologists, pharmacists, geneticists, molecular biologists, and physicists; more than 50 of the firm's lawyers have advanced degrees in such areas as public policy, public health, medicine, engineering, biochemistry, and physics; and more than 80 of our firm's lawyers have served in senior positions in government agencies in the US and Europe, including the: Food and Drug Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, European Commission, National Security Agency, Consumer Product Safety Commission, White House, UK Regulatory Authority, Department of Defense, and State Department.