Bass strikes again, targets anaesthetic drug in IPR

Hedge fund manager Kyle Bass has filed another inter partes review (IPR), teaming up with Erich Spangenberg, the former head of patent monetisation firm IPNav, for a second time.

The petition, filed at the US Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), is the second in which Bass has been named personally and does not reference his organisation the Coalition for Affordable Drugs.

Filed on November 25, the petition targets pharmaceutical company Fresenius Kabi and a patent it owns, US number 8,476,010, for anaesthetic drug Diprivan (propofol).

The coalition has previously filed IPRs against several companies’ patents, arguing that they should be invalidated on the grounds of obviousness.

Bass and Spangenberg have asked the PTAB to institute an IPR of claims 1, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, and 24 to 28 of the ‘010 patent.

Spangenberg, who stepped down from IPNav last year, was alleged to have speculatively filed thousands of lawsuits against other companies.