Horizon Loses Patent Ruling on Apotex’s Copy of Pennsaid 2% Drug

Apotex Inc.’s copy of Horizon Therapeutics Plc’s Pennsaid 2% doesn’t infringe a patent because Apotex’s 2013 pact with the previous owner of the patent from which it was derived is a binding license.

Apotex argued that its 2013 settlement resolving a dispute over Pennsaid’s 1.5% strength version with Nuvo Research Inc. and two subsidiaries of Mallinckrodt Plc granted it a license to the patent. Magistrate Judge Christopher J. Burke agreed in an opinion issued Monday in the US District Court for the District of Delaware.

Horizon sued Apotex in mid-May, one week after the US Food and Drug Administration ...