Valeant, Salix Drug Pricing Fraud Suit Reopened by Ninth Circuit

Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. and Salix Pharmaceuticals Ltd. must again face a False Claims Act suit alleging that the companies fraudulently obtained a patent for the ulcerative colitis drug Apriso and overbilled Medicare for prescriptions, the Ninth Circuit said Thursday.

A district court had said the claims in whistleblower Zachary Silbersher’s suit were disclosed in an inter partes patent review before the Patent and Trademark Office, which triggered the FCA’s public disclosure bar.

But the bar wasn’t triggered because the patent review wasn’t a federal administrative proceeding in which the government was a party, Judge Gabriel P. Sanchez of the ...