Walgreen Co.

Walgreen Co. — Company Profile

Company overview. Walgreen Co. (commonly "Walgreens") is the principal U.S. retail pharmacy operating subsidiary of Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. It traces its founding to 1901, with Walgreen Co. incorporated in Illinois in 1909, and is headquartered in Deerfield, Illinois. Walgreens Boots Alliance was formerly known as Walgreen Co. and renamed in December 2014 after the Alliance Boots combination. WBA traded on Nasdaq as "WBA" until Sycamore Partners completed its acquisition of the company in 2025, taking it private (a transaction announced in March 2025 at roughly $10 billion in equity value, up to about $23.7 billion including debt). Public reporting at the time cited approximately 8,500 U.S. stores and about 220,000 U.S. employees.

Products / services / operations. Walgreens is an operating company, not a patent-assertion entity. It operates a national retail drugstore chain and pharmacy business, filling prescriptions through retail, specialty, mail-service and infusion channels, and retailing front-of-store health, wellness and consumer goods. Walgreens Boots Alliance's broader portfolio has included the Boots, Duane Reade and Benavides retail brands, along with health-care assets such as Shields Health Solutions and CareCentrix; those businesses now operate as standalone entities under Sycamore ownership.

Patent-litigation posture. The tracked data shows one case, with Walgreens as plaintiff and none as defendant: this is not an NPE, and it is not a defendant-side patent target in this dataset. The single matter is an antitrust action rather than a patent-infringement suit, though it cites Celgene's listed patents on Revlimid as part of the alleged conduct. The venue is the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, not a plaintiff-friendly patent venue such as the Eastern District of Texas.

Notable case. Walgreen Co. v. Celgene Corporation (D.N.J., 2:22-cv-06440, filed Nov. 3, 2022, assigned to Judge Esther Salas) alleges Sherman Act and state-law antitrust violations arising from reverse-payment settlements that delayed generic lenalidomide (Revlimid). The case was consolidated into In re Revlimid & Thalomid Purchaser Antitrust Litigation; a later complaint named Walgreens alongside Kroger Specialty Pharmacy and CVS Pharmacy against Dr. Reddy's and others. These are purchaser overcharge claims, reflecting Walgreens' role as a direct buyer of brand and generic drugs.