Wendy A. Whiteford

Wendy A. Whiteford — in-house patent litigation counsel, Amgen Inc.

Focus. Whiteford's practice is biopharmaceutical patent litigation rather than electronics or mechanical work. Her docket presence is almost entirely Amgen matters spanning biologics and small-molecule patents: recombinant protein expression/refolding process patents (the EPO and G-CSF/pegfilgrastim "refold" families), formulated protein products, and BPCIA biosimilar disputes over pegfilgrastim, filgrastim, etanercept, cinacalcet, denosumab, and aflibercept. She has appeared in district courts (D. Del., D.N.J., D. Mass., S.D. Fla., C.D. Cal., N.D. W. Va.) and on appeal before the Federal Circuit.

Side preference. She is a career in-house attorney for a single operating company and does not practice on the plaintiff/NPE side. The tracked data (1 appearance, defendant side, in-house) reflects the Regeneron v. Amgen aflibercept dispute, but the broader docket shows she works both sides of the "v." for Amgen — as patent owner/plaintiff enforcing Amgen patents against biosimilar applicants, and as defense-side in-house counsel when competitors sue Amgen (e.g., Genentech v. Amgen). Because she is a company employee, the plaintiff/defendant split in litigation databases is an unreliable measure of her practice; the constant is that she always represents Amgen.

Firm context. Whiteford joined Amgen's Law Department in August 1996 and has spent her entire in-house career there, currently listed as Vice President, Law, in the Intellectual Property and Litigation group (Thousand Oaks, CA). Before Amgen she spent six years as an attorney at Pretty, Schroeder, Brueggemann & Clark in Los Angeles handling patent and trademark litigation. She acts as the in-house lead who selects, directs, and supervises Amgen's outside trial counsel and controls litigation strategy and budgets.

Notable matters and PTAB. Prominent tracked work includes Amgen v. F. Hoffmann-La Roche (EPO, D. Mass., which went to jury trial and produced a plaintiff verdict that was later resolved), Amgen v. Sandoz (C.D. Cal.), the Amgen v. Adello/Amneal and Amgen v. Apotex process-patent actions, Amgen v. Ariad Pharmaceuticals (D. Del.), and the aflibercept BPCIA litigation against Regeneron, where Amgen defeated Regeneron's preliminary-injunction bid and launched Pavblu in October 2024 (the denial was affirmed by the Federal Circuit in March 2025). She also appeared for Amgen in Regeneron's Delaware antitrust action, in which a jury found Amgen liable and awarded Regeneron roughly $407 million in May 2025 — a notable adverse result. On the PTAB side, the same Amgen patents she has enforced have been the subject of numerous IPRs/PGRs (e.g., Apotex v. Amgen IPR2016-01542, Adello v. Amgen PGR2019-00001, Fresenius Kabi v. Amgen IPR2019-00971/IPR2020-00314, Lupin v. Amgen IPR2021-00326), but public filings do not name her as lead PTAB counsel, so her role appears to be supervisory rather than as counsel of record.

Bar/education. Admitted to the California bar in 1990; registered to practice before the USPTO; also admitted to the Federal Circuit, Ninth Circuit, U.S. Supreme Court, and several district courts. B.S., UC Davis (1987); J.D., UC Hastings College of the Law / UC College of the Law, San Francisco (1990).