Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk has in recent years become widely known for its weight loss drugs, Ozempic, Wegovy, and Rybelsus, but is also the largest provider of human insulin (used to manage Type 1 diabetes) worldwide. The company currently manages over 1,300 patents, which it actively enforces. It had a busy 2025, including successes such as obtaining 29 injunctions against semaglutide rivals in Germany (October 31, 2025 ip fray article) and a key win over one of its semaglutide patents in China (January 5, 2026 ip fray article).
A key member of the team behind those successes is Raquel Frisardi, Associate General Counsel on the Litigation team at Novo Nordisk. While she not only handles IP litigation, a large part of her role consists of coordinating internal and external local and international counsel on IP matters. And a significant part of her day is spent in meetings.
“Meetings, meetings, meetings,” she laughs. In a global litigation coordinating role, you are interfacing with so many different people every day – and you need to be constantly liaising between everyone, and making sure all those conversations “stay synchronised” and you don’t have inconsistency or lose sight of something happening in a jurisdiction, she notes.
At Kisaco’s Patent Litigation Europe Summit in Amsterdam (January 21, 2026 ip fray article), ip fray sat down for an exclusive interview with Ms. Frisardi to reflect on the successes and losses Novo Nordisk navigated in 2025, how she has navigated the transition from being a U.S. commercial litigator to a European patent litigator, and where in the world her team will be keeping a close eye on.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the interview are her own personal opinions and not necessarily the opinions of Novo Nordisk.
When Ms. Frisardi joined Novo Nordisk in August 2023, a key goal for her was to become a European patent litigator. She was neither a patent litigator nor European by background, so getting herself up to speed was a big learning curve.
In fact, Ms. Frisardi has spent most of her career in the U.S., where she served as an Assistant District Attorney in Massachusetts and worked as an associate at the Boston trial boutique Nystrom Beckman & Paris. Moving to Copenhagen was a breeze. “It’s a fabulous city to live and work in,” she says. But learning a new field in a new jurisdiction while staying tuned to what she knows about good litigation was her key challenge.
She notes that people are more highly specialized in Europe because of all the individual Member States and individual branches of law – in some ways, there is more specialization than in the U.S. While there are differences among States, the different systems across Europe are much more pronounced, she adds. And, as part of a global team, Ms. Frisardi has also had to liaise with litigation teams in Brazil, the UK, and Japan, among other jurisdictions.
“I went from being very in my lane and owning what I was doing to constantly being the least informed person in the room – which is humbling and also very exciting,” she says.
“But I have to say,” she adds, “the principles of good litigation are very universal – whether you are litigating a contract, patent infringement, or a crime – there are certain behaviors as a litigator that get you better results, and I think those are very universal.”
Semaglutide successes
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The way forward
India and Brazil are major markets (for the pharmaceutical industry, but also many others due to their sheer size) – and India is also where a huge amount of generics are produced, making them key jurisdictions for Novo Nordisk. However, last year, the company suffered a couple of minor blows to its semaglutide patent portfolio in both Brazil (December 22, 2025 ip fray article) and India (December 4, 2025 ip fray article). Ms. Frisardi notes that she was disappointed by the developments, but emphasizes that Novo Nordisk has several ongoing projects in Brazil that have seen more success.
Generally, moving forward, Ms. Frisardi says she would like to stay practising in-house in Europe:
“It was a very steep learning curve, so I would like to keep doing that.”
Another area she is very passionate about and which she is keen to help develop some new case law in is the compounding and illegal medicines space. “I’d like to get some more industry-wide engagement on that – because I think it’s a critical issue to the future of pharma innovation, and I’d like to establish some new boundaries that will protect innovators,” Ms. Frisardi explains.
“They are a very important tool in the fight against counterfeit medicines.”