Note on entity type: "Robert M. Califf" is not a company. He is an individual — Robert M. Califf, M.D., MACC — a cardiologist and the U.S. Commissioner of Food and Drugs, named as a defendant in his official capacity. There is no ticker, revenue, headcount, or ownership structure to report. The single tracked case reflects his role as a federal official, not commercial litigation activity.
Profile. Califf served as Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration from February 17, 2022 to January 20, 2025 under President Biden, having previously held the same post from February 2016 to January 2017 and serving as FDA Deputy Commissioner for Medical Products and Tobacco from 2015 to 2016 (FDA leadership records). Between FDA roles he was head of medical strategy and a senior advisor at Alphabet Inc., working with Verily Life Sciences and Google Health. Earlier in his career he was a professor of medicine and vice chancellor for clinical and translational research at Duke University and founding director of the Duke Clinical Research Institute.
Litigation posture. The database shows 0 cases as plaintiff and 1 as defendant, consistent with a government official sued in his official capacity — the opposite profile from either an operating-company patent defendant or a patent-assertion entity. The suit was filed not in a plaintiff-friendly patent venue but in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia as an Administrative Procedure Act challenge to agency action.
Notable case. Avadel CNS Pharmaceuticals, LLC v. Becerra et al., No. 1:22-cv-02159 (D.D.C., filed July 21, 2022; terminated Nov. 3, 2022, Judge Amit P. Mehta). Avadel sued HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, HHS, FDA, and Califf after FDA rejected Avadel's patent statement for its narcolepsy drug LUMRYZ (sodium oxybate) and required a patent certification, which triggered Jazz Pharmaceuticals' infringement suit in Delaware. Jazz intervened in the D.C. case. The court granted summary judgment to the federal defendants, holding Avadel had adequate alternative relief in the Delaware proceedings. A related appeal was later docketed as Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Becerra, No. 24-5262 (D.C. Cir.).