Kyle Bass fires off two more IPR petitions

Hedge fund manager Kyle Bass and his Coalition for Affordable Drugs are continuing their campaign against certain pharmaceutical patents, most recently seeking to invalidate patents owned by Celgene and NPS Pharma.

The coalition has filed two petitions for inter partes reviews at the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Filed on Wednesday (April 22), the first petition challenged Celgene’s US patent 6,045,501, called “Methods for delivering a drug to a patient while preventing the exposure of a foetus or other contraindicated individual to the drug”.

One of the drugs associated with the patent is thalidomide, a compound that was widely banned after it was thought to have contributed to birth defects if taken during pregnancy, but is now used to treat certain cancers.

In the second petition, filed on Thursday (April 22), a patent covering NPS Pharma’s Gattex (teduglutide [rDNA origin]), an injection for the treatment of short bowel syndrome, has been targeted.

Bass has now targeted a total of six pharma companies. He did not respond to a request for comment.