Defendant
4 cases as defendant.
Opiant Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: OPNT) was a specialty pharmaceutical company headquartered at 233 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 400, Santa Monica, California. It was incorporated in Nevada in June 2005 as Madrona Ventures, Inc., renamed Lightlake Therapeutics in 2009, then Opiant Pharmaceuticals in January 2016, and reincorporated in Delaware in October 2017. It traded on the Nasdaq Capital Market from August 2017 until March 2023, when Indivior PLC completed its acquisition for $20.00 per share in cash (≈$145 million upfront) plus contingent value rights worth up to $8.00 per share. PitchBook lists roughly 37 employees (2021) and SEC filings/third-party databases indicate a headcount in the low-to-mid 30s. Third-party compilations of SEC filings show revenue of about $29.6 million (2021) and about $47.8 million for the trailing period ended September 30, 2022, driven mainly by royalties and licensing.
Products / operations. Opiant developed opioid-antagonist medicines for substance-use, addictive and eating disorders. Its lead asset was NARCAN® (naloxone hydrochloride) Nasal Spray, conceived and developed with the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIH), licensed in December 2014 to Adapt Pharma Operations Limited (later part of Emergent BioSolutions), FDA-approved in November 2015, and marketed by Adapt; Opiant received milestones and royalties. Its pipeline included OPNT003 (intranasal nalmefene for opioid overdose, later approved as OPVEE), OPNT002 (nasal naltrexone, Phase 2 for alcohol use disorder), and OPNT004/drinabant (CB-1 receptor antagonist, preclinical for acute cannabinoid overdose).
Litigation posture. Opiant is an operating company that litigated primarily as a patent owner, not an NPE. In the tracked data it appears as plaintiff 3 times and defendant 4 times. The three plaintiff cases are Hatch-Waxman ANDA suits it brought with Adapt/Emergent against Teva (2016 and 2018) and Perrigo in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey — not an Eastern District of Texas venue. The four defendant appearances are inter partes reviews filed at the PTAB by Nalox-1 Pharmaceuticals, LLC in February 2019.
Notable context. Nalox-1 filed 15 IPRs against five Orange Book NARCAN patents (’253, ’747, ’177, ’965, ’838); the Board denied 12 and instituted 3, then on August 21, 2020 upheld all instituted claims — conflicting with the D.N.J. Teva decision (June 2020) finding certain claims obvious. Teva’s generic was approved in 2019; Perrigo settled in February 2020, taking a license effective January 5, 2033.
Nalox-1 filed multiple IPR petitions against Opiant challenging U.S. 9,468,747; 9,561,177; 9,629,965; 9,775,838. The '570 patent was not challenged; it was cited as prior art (Wyse).
Inter partes review petition against U.S. 9,775,838. Institution denied on Oct. 16, 2019.
Inter partes review petition against U.S. 9,775,838. Institution denied on Oct. 16, 2019 (Paper 13); Board found prior art teaches away.
Inter partes review challenging all claims 1-29 of US 9,211,253. Instituted August 27, 2019; Final Written Decision entered August 21, 2020. The narrative does not state the substantive outcome of the Final Written Decision.