Coalition for Affordable Drugs III LLC

Coalition for Affordable Drugs III LLC ("CFAD III") is a Delaware-registered shell LLC and one of roughly 15 "Coalition for Affordable Drugs" series entities created in 2015 by Dallas hedge-fund manager J. Kyle Bass. Per PTAB filings, CFAD III is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hayman Credes Master Fund, L.P., part of Bass's Hayman Capital Management (Dallas, TX; founded 2006). Named real parties-in-interest in the CFAD petitions include Hayman Capital entities, nXn Partners LLC, IP Navigation Group (IPNav), Bass, and IPNav founder Erich Spangenberg. No employee count or revenue figures are published for CFAD III.

Products / services. CFAD III has no products, operations, or manufacturing. It is a non-practicing entity formed solely to file inter partes review (IPR) petitions at the USPTO against pharmaceutical patents. The model, reported by the Wall Street Journal in April 2015, combined IPR challenges with short positions in the target companies' stock. Bass framed the campaign as targeting weak or "evergreen" drug patents that inflate prices. The entity does not assert patents it owns; it challenges others', so it holds no traditional patent portfolio. Spangenberg/IPNav acted as paid consultants (per the petitions' mandatory notices).

Litigation posture. The structured data show 1 plaintiff case and 0 defendant cases, all at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board — consistent with an NPE-style assertion/challenge vehicle rather than an operating company. There are no district-court suits and no Eastern District of Texas activity. CFAD III's single tracked matter is Coalition for Affordable Drugs III LLC v. Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Inc., IPR2015-01018, filed April 6, 2015, challenging U.S. Patent 7,895,059 B2 (Xyrem controlled-access distribution system).

Outcome and context. The Board denied institution on October 15, 2015, finding the asserted prior art (an FDA advisory-committee transcript) not shown to be a publicly accessible printed publication and the obviousness showing deficient. The Board separately declined to sanction Bass for abuse of process or to reject the real-party-in-interest disclosures (National Law Review). Across the wider coalition (Series I–VII and later), roughly 16 IPRs were filed against Acorda, Shire, Jazz, Pharmacyclics, Biogen, Celgene, Pozen and others; press reports state the PTAB invalidated patents on only three of 14 targeted drugs and that Bass wound the effort down by 2016.