Pharmacia Corporation ("Pharmacia") was a research-based pharmaceutical company formed in April 2000 when Pharmacia & Upjohn merged with Monsanto's drug business (including G.D. Searle). It was headquartered in Peapack, New Jersey, after consolidating a prior London base in 1998. Its corporate lineage is much older, tracing to Pharmacia AB (Sweden, 1911), Upjohn (Kalamazoo, 1886), and Carlo Erba (1837). One reference source (lex.dk) reports roughly $14 billion in revenue and about 95,000 employees before the Pfizer deal; these figures should be treated as approximate. Pfizer Inc. acquired Pharmacia on April 16, 2003 in a stock transaction valued at about $60 billion, and Pharmacia has operated as a Pfizer subsidiary since then. Crunchbase lists it as acquired by Pfizer.
Products/operations. Pharmacia sold prescription medicines and, historically, animal-health and diagnostics products. Confirmed product lines include Xalatan (latanoprost), a topical glaucoma therapy, and co-promotion of Celebrex (celecoxib) under Searle's arrangement with Pfizer. It completed the spin-off of its agricultural subsidiary, Monsanto Company, in August 2002.
Patent-litigation posture. Pharmacia is an operating company, not a non-practicing entity or patent-assertion vehicle. The tracked data show 1 case as plaintiff and 0 as defendant, consistent with a brand pharmaceutical manufacturer enforcing Orange Book patents against generic filers under the Hatch-Waxman Act. The single case was filed in the District of New Jersey rather than a plaintiff-friendly venue such as the Eastern District of Texas.
Notable case. Pharmacia Corporation et al. v. Par Pharmaceutical, Inc. (D.N.J., filed Dec. 21, 2001; Fed. Cir. 2005, 417 F.3d 1369). After Par notified Pharmacia on Nov. 6, 2001 of ANDA No. 76-218 seeking to market generic Xalatan, Pharmacia and co-plaintiffs (Pharmacia AB, Pharmacia Enterprises S.A., Pharmacia & Upjohn Co., and the Trustees of Columbia University) sued on U.S. Patents 5,422,368 and 5,296,504. The district court held the '368 patent unenforceable for inequitable conduct while leaving the '504 patent enforceable; the Federal Circuit affirmed on August 10, 2005.