On December 12, 2017, the Federal Circuit ruled in favor of Sughrue’s client Accord Healthcare, affirming the PTAB’s inter partes judgment that two Orange Book listed patents for an anti-clotting drug prasugrel (Effient®) were invalid. Accord was sued in the Southern District of Illinois by Eli Lilly and Daiichi-Sankyo for patent infringement based on their filing of an ANDA seeking approval for prasugrel. Sughrue attorneys Michael Dzwonczyk, Chid Iyer and Azy Kokabi, along with several codefendants, successfully obtained a stay of the litigation based upon the PTAB’s institution of two inter partes review petitions, without extending the automatic 30-month stay of FDA approval for ANDAs covering the generic versions. At the U.S. Patent Office, Accord and petitioners successfully argued that every claim of the two patents claiming a combination of prasugrel and aspirin were unpatentable based on prior art that showed it would have been obvious to coadminister the two compounds. Less than one week after the oral argument before the Federal Circuit, the Court summarily affirmed the Board’s decision that the patents were invalid as obvious.