Joana Catarina Piriquito Santos

Joana is a Founding Partner and the Managing Partner of NLP. She is a lawyer, pharmacist and Portuguese patent and trademark attorney, combining a legal and technical background. She is also Invited Professor at the NOVA School of Law, Lisbon, Portugal. Following her research in Pharmaceutical Technology in London, Joana worked as an Innovation Manager, Intellectual Property Consultant and Patent Examiner at the Portuguese Institute of Industrial Property. She was subsequently a Managing Associate at Vieira de Almeida & Associados, where she worked from 2016 to 2024. In 2024, she became a Founding Partner of NLP. Joana specialises in patent litigation before the Portuguese courts and the Unified Patent Court. She alsp provides technical, legal and strategic advice on a wide range of matters relating to Intellectual Property, due diligence and licensing. Over the past decade, her practice has focused on patent disputes, particularly complex infringement and validity proceedings in the pharmaceutical and technology sectors, as well as disputes involving supplementary protection certificates. In the context of the mandatory arbitration proceedings established under Law 62/2011, which applied in Portugal to pharmaceutical patent litigation until 2018, Joana acted as counsel to the parties and as the technical and strategic lead. Joana holds a law degree from the University of Lisbon, where she also attended a postgraduate course in Intellectual Property, as well as an Integrated Master’s Degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Coimbra. She also holds a University Diploma of Higher Studies in Patent Litigation in Europe from the Centre d’Études Internationales de la Propriété Intellectuelle at the University of Strasbourg and attended the Course on European Patent Law in the same institution. Joana is also President of the Patents Commission of UNION-IP and a member of the Standing Advisory Committee of the European Patent Office, SACEPO Working Party on Guidelines. In 2025, she was elected to the Advisory Board of APDI -the Portuguese Association of Intellectual Property Law - for the 2025-2027 term.