Hospira, Inc.

Hospira, Inc. (NYSE: HSP until 2015; commonly "Hospira") was an American pharmaceutical and medical-device company headquartered at 275 North Field Drive, Lake Forest, Illinois. It was spun off from Abbott Laboratories' global hospital-products business and began trading independently on May 3, 2004; corporate records list a 2003 founding. At the time of its acquisition, Wikipedia and investor materials put Hospira at roughly 19,000 employees, ~13–14 manufacturing sites, and about $4.5 billion in 2014 revenue. It ceased to be an independent public company on September 3, 2015, when Pfizer Inc. completed a roughly $17 billion acquisition ($90/share), making Hospira a Pfizer subsidiary; Pfizer subsequently sold Hospira's medical-device (infusion pump) business to ICU Medical in a deal announced in 2016 and closed in 2017.

Products and operations. Hospira was the world's largest producer of generic injectable pharmaceuticals. Its lines included specialty injectable pharmaceuticals (roughly 200 generic acute-care and oncology injectables, plus proprietary products such as Precedex); biosimilars (Retacrit, Nivestim, Inflectra); medication-management systems (infusion pumps including Symbiq, Plum A+ and LifeCare PCA, with Hospira MedNet safety software); infusion therapy supplies and I.V. administration sets; and third-party contract manufacturing of sterile injectables. Customers were primarily hospitals, wholesalers, IDNs and alternate-site providers.

Litigation posture. The tracked data show Hospira as a defendant only — 1 case, 0 as plaintiff — consistent with an operating company defending its products rather than a patent-assertion entity. The sole tracked suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware (not a plaintiff-favored Texas venue). The company's litigation history is dominated by Hatch-Waxman ANDA and biosimilar patent disputes, where it typically appeared as a generic/biosimilar challenger or ANDA defendant.

Notable case. Helsinn Healthcare S.A. et al. v. Hospira Inc. (D. Del., filed March 25, 2015) was an ANDA patent-infringement action by Helsinn and Roche over palonosetron hydrochloride (Aloxi) intravenous solution patents, arising from Hospira's Paragraph IV certification on ANDA No. 207005. The parallel Helsinn cases against Teva, Dr. Reddy's and Fresenius produced the Federal Circuit and Supreme Court decisions on the AIA on-sale bar; the Hospira action reflects that same injectables technology focus.

Sources: Pfizer/Hospira merger press releases and Hospira SEC filings; Wikipedia; investor fact sheets.